A former Republican lawmaker was sentenced to 22 months in prison for insider trading on Tuesday.

Stephen Buyer, 64, who served as a U.S. representative from Indiana from 1993 to 2011, was convicted earlier this year for operating off insider information after leaving office. In addition to incarceration, Buyer was ordered to forfeit the $354,027 he had gained with the trades in addition to a $10,000 fine.

Buyer’s conviction arose from his purchase of stocks in Navigant, a management company that one of Buyer’s clients, Guidehouse, was set to purchase weeks later. He also purchased shares of Sprint after learning of the company’s non-public plans to merge with T-Mobile.

‘Stephen Buyer was convicted by a jury of twice engaging in insider trading.  He abused positions of trust for illicit personal gain, and today he faced justice for those acts.  No insider trader is above the law, and we will continue to bring those who undermine the fairness and integrity of our markets to justice,’ U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement Tuesday.

Buyer,64, is scheduled to report to prison on November 28.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman also accused Buyer of obstruction of justice for providing false explanations for his trades to the court.

Buyer, a lawyer and Persian Gulf War veteran once chaired the House Veterans’ Affairs committee and was a House prosecutor at then-President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial.

Buyer’s lawyers had urged Berman to limit his sentence to home confinement and community service.

Prior to sentencing, the defense told the court that Buyer, who once made as much as $2.2 million in a year, has suffered so much from the cost of litigation that he and his wife have sold most of their assets, including their home, condo and two cars, and his wife will have to return to the workforce at age 65.

Prosecutors had previously pushed for Buyer to pay an additional $1.4 million to cover the cost of legal fees for both sides, but the judge ruled against it.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A former Republican lawmaker was sentenced to 22 months in prison for insider trading on Tuesday.

Stephen Buyer, 64, who served as a U.S. representative from Indiana from 1993 to 2011, was convicted earlier this year for operating off insider information after leaving office. In addition to incarceration, Buyer was ordered to forfeit the $354,027 he had gained with the trades in addition to a $10,000 fine.

Buyer’s conviction arose from his purchase of stocks in Navigant, a management company that one of Buyer’s clients, Guidehouse, was set to purchase weeks later. He also purchased shares of Sprint after learning of the company’s non-public plans to merge with T-Mobile.

‘Stephen Buyer was convicted by a jury of twice engaging in insider trading.  He abused positions of trust for illicit personal gain, and today he faced justice for those acts.  No insider trader is above the law, and we will continue to bring those who undermine the fairness and integrity of our markets to justice,’ U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement Tuesday.

Buyer,64, is scheduled to report to prison on November 28.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman also accused Buyer of obstruction of justice for providing false explanations for his trades to the court.

Buyer, a lawyer and Persian Gulf War veteran once chaired the House Veterans’ Affairs committee and was a House prosecutor at then-President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial.

Buyer’s lawyers had urged Berman to limit his sentence to home confinement and community service.

Prior to sentencing, the defense told the court that Buyer, who once made as much as $2.2 million in a year, has suffered so much from the cost of litigation that he and his wife have sold most of their assets, including their home, condo and two cars, and his wife will have to return to the workforce at age 65.

Prosecutors had previously pushed for Buyer to pay an additional $1.4 million to cover the cost of legal fees for both sides, but the judge ruled against it.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Former President Donald Trump travels to Iowa on Wednesday as he turns up the volume on his campaign in the state whose caucuses lead off the GOP presidential nominating calendar.

But Trump returns to Iowa in the wake of controversial abortions comments he made this past weekend that sparked outrage among some in the social conservative community in a state where Evangelical voters play an outsized role in the Republican presidential caucuses. 

Trump, who for months has been the commanding front-runner in the 2024 Republican race, is gunning to take down Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s relentlessly criss-crossed Iowa this summer as he tries to shave points off of Trump’s enormous double-digit lead in the Hawkeye State.

With less than four months to go until the Iowa caucuses, the former president will hold a ‘Team Trump Caucus Commitment’ organizing event with campaign volunteers at the Jackson County Fairgrounds in Maquoketa. Later, he’ll give policy remarks at the Grand River Conference Center in Dubuque in front of what his campaign estimates will be a crowd of up to 2,500 people.

Trump’s campaign also highlights that the former president will make four more trips to Iowa next month.

‘Polling shows President Trump leading by nearly 40 points, but as he always tells us, put the pedal to the metal,’ Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung emphasized in a statement. ‘We don’t play prevent defense, and his aggressive upcoming schedule reflects President Trump’s continued commitment to earning support in Iowa one voter at a time.’

The campaign’s also adding a new senior adviser in Iowa. And the former president’s getting support in the state from the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc., which this past weekend launched a more than $700,000 week-long ad buy in Iowa.

Trump’s historic four criminal indictments this year — including two for allegedly trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Biden — appear to have only strengthened his support among likely Republican primary voters.

The latest Fox News national survey in the GOP nomination race, conducted Sept. 9-12, pointed to Trump expanding his already enormous lead over the rest of the field.

But while still towering over his rivals, Trump’s lead in the latest surveys in Iowa, as well as New Hampshire and South Carolina, two other crucial early voting states in the Republican nominating calendar, is not as overwhelming.

‘It’s closer in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina than it is nationally, but it’s not close,’ said David Kochel, a longtime Republican consultant and veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns.

‘These things do break late. There’s a lot of stuff we haven’t seen or heard yet. Whether it’s Trump’s trials, which I don’t think are going to move any numbers against him. Whether it’s future debates. Whether it’s something we can’t foresee now,’ Kochel noted. ‘The door’s still open, but it’s not as wide open as it was.’

Trump’s made seven trips to Iowa so far this year, including a quick swing through the State Fair last month and an appearance earlier this month at a fraternity house in Ames before attending the annual Iowa-Iowa State college football game.

His campaign touts that they added over 2,250 signed caucus pledge cards during Trump’s most recent Iowa trip, bringing the total collected to more than 27,500. And they highlight that they’ve recruited over 1,000 precinct captains for January’s caucuses.

But Trump’s visits to the state can’t compare to frequency some of his rivals travels, such as DeSantis, former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

With the clock ticking towards January, Iowa based Republican strategist and presidential campaign veteran Jimmy Centers emphasized that ‘at some point the rest of the field has to make a stronger and more compelling argument as they why them. Why are we changing horses from the former president…They have to speak more directly to that point and start doing it soon.’

But Trump appears to have handed his rivals some ammunition over the combustible issue of abortion.

Trump declined to endorse a specific number of weeks after which abortion would be banned, with some exceptions, and he refused to say whether he feels the issue should settled at the state or federal levels, in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC News’ ‘Meet the Press.’

‘We’re going to agree to a number of weeks or months or however you want to define it,’ Trump said. ‘And both sides are going to come together and both sides — both sides, and this is a big statement — both sides will come together…I think both sides are going to like me.’

Trump also once criticized Republicans who take too hard an abortion stance, saying ‘You’re not going to win on this issue.’

And he called the six-week abortion ban DeSantis signed into law in Florida ‘a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.’

Firing back, DeSantis said in an interview with Radio Iowa that ‘Donald Trump may think it’s terrible. I think protecting babies with heartbeats is noble and just and I’m proud to have signed the heartbeat bill in Florida and I know Iowa has similar legislation,’

‘I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re somehow prolife if you’re criticizing states for enacting protections for babies that have heartbeats,’ DeSantis stressed.

Scott, who to date has mostly avoided criticizing Trump, said during a campaign stop Monday in Iowa that ‘President Trump said he would negotiate with the Democrats and walk back away from what I believe we need, which is a 15-week limit on the federal level.’

Popular conservative GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa – who earlier this year signed a similar six-week ban into law – on Tuesday defended her measure, saying ‘It’s never a ‘terrible thing’ to protect innocent life.’

Bob Vander Plaats, the president and CEO of the Family Leader, an influential faith-based organization in Iowa, took to social media to charge that the former president Donald Trump ‘has shown his true colors.’

‘The scripture states out of the heart, the mouth speaks. I think  @realDonaldTrump revealed his heart on @MeetThePress,’ Vander Plaats argued.

And he warned that Trump’s ‘let’s make a deal’ on the #SanctityofHumanLife ‘ could lead to the former president ‘losing his base’ in Iowa.

Vander Plaats, who is far from a Trump supporter, is likely to endorse one of the former president’s rivals in the coming months.

Trump took to his Truth Social network on Tuesday to defend his record, writing, ‘I was able to do something that nobody thought was possible, end Roe v. Wade.

‘Like Ronald Reagan before me, I believe in the three exceptions for Rape, Incest, and the Life of the Mother. Without the exceptions, it is very difficult to win Elections, we would probably lose the Majorities in 2024, and perhaps the Presidency itself, but you must follow your HEART!’ Trump wrote.

And he reiterated past comments that ‘In order to win in 2024, Republicans must learn how to talk about Abortion. This issue cost us unnecessarily, but dearly, in the Midterms…’

Nicole Schlinger, a veteran Iowa-based conservative operative and strategist who is well-connected with evangelical groups, told Fox News that Trump ‘was the most pro-life president in our lifetime. He gave us the justices that gave us Dobbs, and we’re grateful for that.’

But she added ‘what he does next matters and negotiating weeks of human life with Democrats does not seem like what Evangelical caucus goers wanted when they asked for those justices.’

‘It remains to be seen but this could be one of those moments where we say the tide turned,’ Schlinger predicted. ‘I think it could and it should motivate Evangelical caucus goers to take a second look. I think the door’s open for another candidate, but it’s up to someone to walk through it.’

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Former President Donald Trump travels to Iowa on Wednesday as he turns up the volume on his campaign in the state whose caucuses lead off the GOP presidential nominating calendar.

But Trump returns to Iowa in the wake of controversial abortions comments he made this past weekend that sparked outrage among some in the social conservative community in a state where Evangelical voters play an outsized role in the Republican presidential caucuses. 

Trump, who for months has been the commanding front-runner in the 2024 Republican race, is gunning to take down Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s relentlessly criss-crossed Iowa this summer as he tries to shave points off of Trump’s enormous double-digit lead in the Hawkeye State.

With less than four months to go until the Iowa caucuses, the former president will hold a ‘Team Trump Caucus Commitment’ organizing event with campaign volunteers at the Jackson County Fairgrounds in Maquoketa. Later, he’ll give policy remarks at the Grand River Conference Center in Dubuque in front of what his campaign estimates will be a crowd of up to 2,500 people.

Trump’s campaign also highlights that the former president will make four more trips to Iowa next month.

‘Polling shows President Trump leading by nearly 40 points, but as he always tells us, put the pedal to the metal,’ Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung emphasized in a statement. ‘We don’t play prevent defense, and his aggressive upcoming schedule reflects President Trump’s continued commitment to earning support in Iowa one voter at a time.’

The campaign’s also adding a new senior adviser in Iowa. And the former president’s getting support in the state from the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc., which this past weekend launched a more than $700,000 week-long ad buy in Iowa.

Trump’s historic four criminal indictments this year — including two for allegedly trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Biden — appear to have only strengthened his support among likely Republican primary voters.

The latest Fox News national survey in the GOP nomination race, conducted Sept. 9-12, pointed to Trump expanding his already enormous lead over the rest of the field.

But while still towering over his rivals, Trump’s lead in the latest surveys in Iowa, as well as New Hampshire and South Carolina, two other crucial early voting states in the Republican nominating calendar, is not as overwhelming.

‘It’s closer in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina than it is nationally, but it’s not close,’ said David Kochel, a longtime Republican consultant and veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns.

‘These things do break late. There’s a lot of stuff we haven’t seen or heard yet. Whether it’s Trump’s trials, which I don’t think are going to move any numbers against him. Whether it’s future debates. Whether it’s something we can’t foresee now,’ Kochel noted. ‘The door’s still open, but it’s not as wide open as it was.’

Trump’s made seven trips to Iowa so far this year, including a quick swing through the State Fair last month and an appearance earlier this month at a fraternity house in Ames before attending the annual Iowa-Iowa State college football game.

His campaign touts that they added over 2,250 signed caucus pledge cards during Trump’s most recent Iowa trip, bringing the total collected to more than 27,500. And they highlight that they’ve recruited over 1,000 precinct captains for January’s caucuses.

But Trump’s visits to the state can’t compare to frequency some of his rivals travels, such as DeSantis, former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

With the clock ticking towards January, Iowa based Republican strategist and presidential campaign veteran Jimmy Centers emphasized that ‘at some point the rest of the field has to make a stronger and more compelling argument as they why them. Why are we changing horses from the former president…They have to speak more directly to that point and start doing it soon.’

But Trump appears to have handed his rivals some ammunition over the combustible issue of abortion.

Trump declined to endorse a specific number of weeks after which abortion would be banned, with some exceptions, and he refused to say whether he feels the issue should settled at the state or federal levels, in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC News’ ‘Meet the Press.’

‘We’re going to agree to a number of weeks or months or however you want to define it,’ Trump said. ‘And both sides are going to come together and both sides — both sides, and this is a big statement — both sides will come together…I think both sides are going to like me.’

Trump also once criticized Republicans who take too hard an abortion stance, saying ‘You’re not going to win on this issue.’

And he called the six-week abortion ban DeSantis signed into law in Florida ‘a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.’

Firing back, DeSantis said in an interview with Radio Iowa that ‘Donald Trump may think it’s terrible. I think protecting babies with heartbeats is noble and just and I’m proud to have signed the heartbeat bill in Florida and I know Iowa has similar legislation,’

‘I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re somehow prolife if you’re criticizing states for enacting protections for babies that have heartbeats,’ DeSantis stressed.

Scott, who to date has mostly avoided criticizing Trump, said during a campaign stop Monday in Iowa that ‘President Trump said he would negotiate with the Democrats and walk back away from what I believe we need, which is a 15-week limit on the federal level.’

Popular conservative GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa – who earlier this year signed a similar six-week ban into law – on Tuesday defended her measure, saying ‘It’s never a ‘terrible thing’ to protect innocent life.’

Bob Vander Plaats, the president and CEO of the Family Leader, an influential faith-based organization in Iowa, took to social media to charge that the former president Donald Trump ‘has shown his true colors.’

‘The scripture states out of the heart, the mouth speaks. I think  @realDonaldTrump revealed his heart on @MeetThePress,’ Vander Plaats argued.

And he warned that Trump’s ‘let’s make a deal’ on the #SanctityofHumanLife ‘ could lead to the former president ‘losing his base’ in Iowa.

Vander Plaats, who is far from a Trump supporter, is likely to endorse one of the former president’s rivals in the coming months.

Trump took to his Truth Social network on Tuesday to defend his record, writing, ‘I was able to do something that nobody thought was possible, end Roe v. Wade.

‘Like Ronald Reagan before me, I believe in the three exceptions for Rape, Incest, and the Life of the Mother. Without the exceptions, it is very difficult to win Elections, we would probably lose the Majorities in 2024, and perhaps the Presidency itself, but you must follow your HEART!’ Trump wrote.

And he reiterated past comments that ‘In order to win in 2024, Republicans must learn how to talk about Abortion. This issue cost us unnecessarily, but dearly, in the Midterms…’

Nicole Schlinger, a veteran Iowa-based conservative operative and strategist who is well-connected with evangelical groups, told Fox News that Trump ‘was the most pro-life president in our lifetime. He gave us the justices that gave us Dobbs, and we’re grateful for that.’

But she added ‘what he does next matters and negotiating weeks of human life with Democrats does not seem like what Evangelical caucus goers wanted when they asked for those justices.’

‘It remains to be seen but this could be one of those moments where we say the tide turned,’ Schlinger predicted. ‘I think it could and it should motivate Evangelical caucus goers to take a second look. I think the door’s open for another candidate, but it’s up to someone to walk through it.’

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

The Biden administration is pushing back against a demand by a conservative legal group that it reveals information about the illegal immigrants being considered for arrest and deportation, including their terror, cartel and gang affiliations — arguing that, among other concerns, it could violate their privacy rights.

America First Legal in 2021 filed a Freedom of Information Act request for weekly reports of proposed enforcement actions submitted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to headquarters before they could arrest or deport those illegal immigrants. 

This approval process took effect with the implementation of new guidance from DHS which narrowed ICE priorities to focusing on recent border crossers, public safety threats and national security threats. Information in those weekly reports includes names, addresses, visa information, and any gang, cartel or terror affiliations.

In its document production to AFL, DHS significantly redacted much of the personal identifying information. AFL has challenged this in a U.S. District Court, and DHS is in turn seeking to have that denied.

‘ICE compiled the Spreadsheet Report for law enforcement purposes, and disclosure of noncitizens’ names, court case numbers, A-numbers and other identifying numbers, dates of birth, residential addresses, gang, cartel, and terrorist group affiliations, and monikers would seriously invade personal privacy without serving the public interest in understanding ICE’s operations,’ the agency argued in an August court filing.

‘ICE properly withheld gang, cartel, and terrorist group affiliations of noncitizens under Exemption 7(C), because disclosure would invade noncitizens’ personal privacy without any countervailing public interest,’ it said addressing the affiliations specifically.

Separately, it argued that the disclosures overall would ‘disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations and would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations that could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.’

But in a court filing on Friday, AFL pushed back against those arguments, saying ICE had not identified any such law enforcement technique that would be implicated, and arguing that the records were created for political, not law enforcement, purposes. It also argued that the public’s right to know about the potential gang ties of those in the approval process outweighed any privacy rights of the immigrants involved.

‘The Court should reject the notion that cartel and gang members have any privacy interest in hiding their identity under FOIA, and thus no balancing is required. But even if the Court proceeds to balancing, the Plaintiff should prevail because the interests of a cartel member to be free from harassment cannot outweigh the American public’s right to know about matters of public safety,’ the filing says.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, AFL Vice President and General Counsel Gene Hamilton said that the American people ‘have every right to know the criminal history or gang affiliations of illegal aliens in the United States.’ 

‘The simple fact is that every single crime they commit is a crime that wouldn’t have happened if our immigration laws were enforced, and the privacy interests of a cartel member or a gang member can never outweigh the need of the American people to know what is happening in their own country,’ he said.

The administration has faced significant legal challenges over its ICE enforcement, with the Supreme Court ultimately deciding in the administration’s favor this year over a major case challenging the guidelines after states challenged it on the basis that it had led to a sharp drop in deportations. DHS said it does not comment on pending litigation.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said when the case was decided that the guidelines have been ‘effectively applied by [ICE] officers to focus limited resources and enforcement actions on those who pose a threat to our national security, public safety, and border security.’ 

‘The Guidelines enable DHS to most effectively accomplish its law enforcement mission with the authorities and resources provided by Congress,’ he said.

The lawsuit by AFL marks the latest battle that conservative groups and Republicans in Congress and at the state level have launched in order to receive more information from the administration about issues such as the ongoing crisis at the southern border and the enforcement policies of the administration. Fox News Digital reported on Tuesday that 25 governors have urged President Biden to provide more data and information on migrant releases into the interior, as well as numbers on deportations and asylum claims. DHS officials have previously rejected accusations of a lack of transparency, pointing to responses to over 1,400 letters and dozens of witnesses across multiple congressional hearings, including over 8,000 pages of documents. 

But Matt O’Brien, director of investigations at the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), told Fox News Digital that his organization has been facing similar issues that AFL has faced in getting information, and said it coincided with the administration’s policies becoming more known to the public.

‘They have been increasingly resistant to releasing any kind of information. We’ve asked them for policy documents, which should be a matter of public record in a lot of instances, and they’ve never been published the way they should have, and they won’t release them on FOIA requests. So this has been an ongoing problem, and it’s really not the way the government of the United States is supposed to work.’

Former ICE Director Thomas Homan, who served under multiple administrations and is now a senior fellow at IRLI, told Fox News Digital that he believes that data is being withheld for political reasons.,

‘I truly believe as a guy who used to be the director of ICE, the guy who has been with ICE most of my career, that this administration has personally been nontransparent because of data that’s going to embarrass this administration,’ he said. ‘It’s going to show that they’re not enforcing the law the way they should be enforcing the law. And the number of arrests of criminal aliens is way below prior years. So this is their way of using a privacy declaration as a way to hide their failure.’

A Virginia Democratic congresswoman has deleted a post supporting House of Delegates candidate Susanna Gibson following an online sex act scandal in what some on social media are calling an attempted ‘clean up.’

‘Fantastic night supporting @SusannaSGibson with @SCVanValkenburg and @SenatorHashimi as we prepare for the start of early voting in Virginia THIS month,’ Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger posted on social media on Sept. 8. 

‘These Virginians truly care about getting things done for their communities, protecting our rights, and growing our economy.’

As of Tuesday, that post was deleted from Spanberger’s social media account on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Days after Spanberger’s post, Gibson found herself at the center of a scandal after a Washington Post report revealed that she had streamed online sex acts with her husband while soliciting her followers for ‘tips’ that would go ‘to a good cause.’

Some on social media described Spanberger’s deleted tweet as an attempt to scrub Democratic support of her campaign from the internet. 

‘Virginia Dem Rep. Abigail Spanberger has DELETED her tweet where she said she had a ‘fantastic night supporting’ Dem candidate Susanna Gibson who talked about forcing unsuspecting hotel staff to take part in her porn & solicited payments on publicly live-streamed videos so users could ‘watch me pee,’’ conservative strategist and former Sen. Ted Cruz spokesperson Steve Guest posted online.

Guest also posted that it appears a Virginia newspaper has scrubbed a Gibson op-ed from its website.

Spanberger’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Some on the left, including one of the most prominent Democrats in the Virginia state Senate, have stood by Gibson.

Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas called on her followers to donate to Gibson’s campaign after the controversy and ‘make this the biggest fundraising day’ of her campaign.

Gibson, a 40-year-old mother of two who works as a nurse practitioner, has remained defiant amid the pushback from the scandal and described the discovery of the online posts as ‘an illegal invasion of my privacy designed to humiliate me and my family.’

‘It won’t intimidate me, and it won’t silence me,’ Gibson added. ‘My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they’re willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up.’

A procedural vote to advance the House GOP’s defense spending bill failed 212-214 on the chamber floor on Tuesday after Republican lawmakers butted heads over how to avoid a government shutdown. The result is a blow to Speaker Kevin McCarthy given that the party in power traditionally does as ordered on a ‘rule’ vote that sets the terms for putting the bill on the floor.

Five Republicans voted with Democrats to kill the move, known as a rules vote. This is the second time it’s happened during McCarthy’s tenure – the last time a rules vote failed before that was November 2002. The five Republicans who voted against the rule are Reps. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., Ralph Norman, R-S.C., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Dan Bishop, R-N.C., and Ken Buck, R-Colo.

Democrats erupted in cheers as Republicans launched into heated conversations on the House floor.

It’s a symptom of the tensions that have bubbled up to the surface in recent days over how to fund the federal government.

The doomed legislation was one of 12 appropriations bills Congress is working to pass to fund the government for the next fiscal year. If no action is taken on spending by Sept. 30, the government could enter a partial shutdown.

It’s prompted GOP lawmakers to scramble for a deal on a continuing resolution (CR), announced Sunday night by negotiators for the hardline-right House Freedom Caucus and the more pragmatic Main Street Caucus. The short-term deal would fund the government for a month at roughly an 8% cut and includes portions of House Republicans’ border security bill.

But expected opposition to CR by more than a dozen conservatives forced House GOP leaders to delay a vote to advance it on Tuesday. 

A frustrated McCarthy told reporters after the failed procedural vote that the measure tanking makes it ‘harder’ to pass a CR.

‘Ask those five why they voted against it.  Think about what they’re voting against. They’re voting against even bringing the bill up to have a discussion about it to vote on. If you’re opposed to the bill, vote against the bill at the end…You could change it if you don’t like it. But the idea that you vote against a rule, to even bring it up, that makes no sense to me,’ McCarthy said.

Lawmakers were seen entering and exiting House Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office through the day to hash out their disagreements in a meeting that one member described as ‘passionate.’

‘These disagreements are not flippant,’ said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., when he emerged from the meeting. ‘There’s no one trying to seek separation within the conference. We have principled differences of opinion and perceptions, and what we believe is righteous is varied from representative to representative.’

One possible path forward offered in the closed-door meeting was an amendment by Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla., which would effectively be his own group’s version of a CR.

It would slash government funding for its month-long duration back to fiscal year 2022 levels and also include the border security bill. One key inclusion, however, is that of eVerify provisions that were not part of the original Sunday night CR proposal, a source told Fox News Digital.

Hern told reporters on Tuesday that three members who opposed the initial CR plan would back it with the inclusion of his amendment.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman said during a radio interview as a candidate last year he would adhere to whatever dress code was in place if he was elected to the Senate. 

‘Will you wear your hoodie on the Senate floor,’ Fetterman was asked during an interview with the Big K Morning Show in early October 2022 on the campaign trail. 

‘I’m going to only wear what you’re supposed to wear and whatever dress code,’ he responded.

‘It’s really not about what I’m wearing, and if anyone that’s listening prefers somebody that dresses like a real person, or somebody that lives, excuse me, that wears a $5,000 fancy suit, then that’s really up to somebody. You can make your own conclusion.’

Since being elected the month after that interview and taking office in January, Fetterman has not adhered to the Senate dress code and has often been seen around the building wearing gym shorts and his trademark hoodie. 

Additionally, Fetterman found a workaround to the legislative body’s dress code rules by voting from the doorway of the Democratic cloakroom or the side entrance, making sure his vote is recorded before ducking out.

On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer quietly announced the Senate’s dress code has been relaxed, excluding visitors.

‘Senators are able to choose what they wear on the Senate floor. I will continue to wear a suit,’ Schumer said in a statement.

The move sparked outrage from some conservatives who dubbed the change the ‘Fetterman Rule’ and panned the idea of lowering the standards for physical appearance in the Senate.

‘The Senate no longer enforcing a dress code for Senators to appease Fetterman is disgraceful,’ Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X. ‘Dress code is one of society’s standards that set etiquette and respect for our institutions. Stop lowering the bar!’

Fetterman’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital Tuesday.

‘I don’t know why the right side seems to be losing their minds over it, like, ahhhhh dogs and cats are living together and, you know, like the world spinning off its axis,’ Fetterman told Fox News Digital in an interview Monday. ‘But, you know, I think it’s a good thing.’

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday government shutdowns ‘have always been a loser for Republicans politically’ and that they’ve ‘never produced a policy change’ amid ongoing division in Congress about government funding.

‘I’m not a fan of government shutdowns,’ McConnell told reporters following the GOP conference’s weekly luncheon. 

McConnell said the upper chamber is waiting to see what the House is going to do on a continuing resolution (CR), which would keep the previous year’s funding for federal programs temporarily. 

However, the anticipated procedural vote for the temporary spending bill, which was crafted through negotiations between the House Freedom Caucus and Main Street Caucus, was removed from the schedule on Tuesday. The government will enter partial shutdown if no deal is reached by 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 30.

‘We’ll see what the House does and act accordingly,’ McConnell said. ‘I support what the speaker is trying to accomplish because he’s trying to avoid a government shutdown, and he’s trying to help with an appropriations process so that we have something close to a normal process.’

The House Freedom Caucus and Main Street Caucus’s proposed legislation proposed averting a government shutdown through Oct. 31 by an 8% reduction in non-defense discretionary spending, along wit key components of the House GOP’s border security bill, The Secure the Border Act, passed earlier this year. 

But House Republicans are divided on the issue and whether a CR should even be passed, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy can only lose a handful of Republicans to pass anything without Democratic votes.

Meanwhile, the Senate — which Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has used as a shining example of bipartisanship in contrast to the House — is also experiencing pushback from Republican leaders on passing its appropriation bills.

Last week, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., rejected a move to advance military construction and Veterans Affairs spending bills because they were combined with funding for the departments of Agriculture, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. He and other conservatives argued they should be split up and voted on individually. 

Sen. Jon Cornyn, R-Texas, attempted shifted the blame to Schumer, and said on the floor last week: ‘He knows we can’t pass all these bills in the next 16 days.’

‘It’s a gold standard for political theater, this is drama scripted by the majority leader so he won’t get blamed for a shutdown,’ he said, calling it ‘a Schumer shutdown.’

If both chambers can’t pass all 12 appropriation bills by Jan. 1, a 1% spending cut will be enacted on all non-defense discretionary spending.

Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.