Congress returns to Venezuela clash, a shutdown deadline and a health care fight

WASHINGTON — The House and Senate are expected to return this week from recess and face a growing list of tasks and potential agenda items in early 2026.

For many, President Donald Trump’s decision this weekend to launch strikes in Venezuela and capture leader Nicolás Maduro, in addition to his assertion that the United States will “run” the country for the foreseeable future, is at the forefront of concerns.

This will add to an already large to-do list for Congress early in the year, heading into the November midterm elections. Here are five issues facing Capitol Hill:

Fight for health care

January on Capitol Hill will be heavily marked by a fight over health care after enhanced tax credits for 22 million people under Obamacare expired, leading to big increases in premiums starting this month.

In the House, four Republicans from swing districts joined with all Democrats to sideline Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and force a full House vote on a three-year extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. It’s scheduled for this week. But even though it is likely to pass the House, Senate Republicans told NBC News before the holiday that the bill was dead as soon as it reached the upper chamber.

Can something pass both houses and undo the premium hikes? It’s not clear.

Many Republican senators want the ACA funds to expire completely, and Trump has encouraged them by slamming the funds. The few open to an extension have drifted away from Democrats in recent months over how to achieve it. They demand eligibility limits and new anti-fraud safeguards on money (which Democrats are open to), as well as tighter restrictions on abortion (which Democrats view as a failure).

Without a breakthrough, millions of people will pay more for their health insurance this year, move to less substantial plans, or go without insurance altogether. That could be a powerful weapon for Democrats in the midterm elections, as polls show Republicans will take more blame for rising costs. Some in the Republican Party worry that failing to pass legislation extending the funds would cost their party seats and even give Democrats a majority in the House.

Government funding deadline

Congress’ most important task this month is funding the government before the Jan. 30 deadline. This follows the longest shutdown in U.S. history last fall.

Democrats allowed the government to shut down last fall while demanding continued ACA funds. But this time it seems unlikely that they will threaten to shut down their activities.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last month that it would be “very difficult to put that toothpaste back in the tube” after Jan. 1, in response to a question about whether Democrats would use the same tactic to try to revive health care subsidies.

Asked if she expected further confrontation over the ACA in a government funding bill, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., responded just before the holiday: “I don’t. It’s just me.”

Shaheen is a key figure in the debate: a member of the Appropriations Committee, she was at the forefront of ACA negotiations, and she was one of eight Democrats who voted to reopen the government in November.

However, this is far from the only problem.

As part of the November deal, Congress passed three of 12 appropriations bills intended to fund the government through September. The other nine will be more difficult to obtain bicameral agreements. Backers, responsible for writing government funding bills, are confident they can pass at least some of them, but they may have to default to another continuing resolution to temporarily keep the rest of the government funded at current levels to avoid a shutdown.

As long as Republicans can unite and pass a short-term funding bill through the House on their own, without much help from Democrats, the Senate will face immense pressure to pass it.

Maduro briefings and war debate

Members of Congress say they expect briefings from the Trump administration as early as this week on Trump’s extraordinary — and controversial — attack on Venezuela.

As Republican leaders rally around Trump’s decision, some Republican lawmakers and most Democrats have criticized the move, questioning its legality and wisdom.

And Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who serves on the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, said he wants to force a Senate vote to reaffirm the war powers that the Constitution reserves for Congress, not the executive branch.

This debate, which raises major national and international issues, will take place in the coming weeks. Briefings can be tense; Several Democrats accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of misleading Congress, or outright lying, in the run-up to the operation.

Ban on stock trading

It is a populist cause that brings together an unusual coalition on the right and left, although it has tended to fizzle in recent years. The duo of Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Seth Magaziner, DR.I., are now trying to change that with the Restore Trust in Congress Act, which would prohibit members of Congress and their spouses from owning and trading stocks.

Roy said the authors have made “tremendous progress.”

“I have a feeling we will be able to move forward on this issue early next year,” he said in December. “I feel like we’re in a really good position and I think we’re going to deliver a good product early in the year.”

Democratic leaders support this cause.

“There is overwhelming support for legislation to ban stock trading in Congress. It’s long past time that this be done,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters last month, while criticizing Johnson for showing “zero interest” in bringing the bill to a vote.

But it may not be Johnson’s decision. Before Congress left for the recess, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., filed a discharge petition to force passage of the bill. It has 74 signatories. If it reaches 218, it will need to get a vote in the full House.

“Time is now of the essence. If leaders do not act quickly to propose a strict ban on securities trading to Congress, the body’s members will act,” Roy and Magaziner said in a joint statement.

Regulation of AI and protection of children online

Regulating artificial intelligence and protecting children online have been the subject of much debate in recent months, but Congress has failed to pass legislation on either front. Could this change in 2026? Some lawmakers certainly hope so.

Capitol Hill’s failure to act on AI regulation has led more than three dozen states to take matters into their own hands. Big tech companies are begging Washington to remove national regulations so they don’t have to comply with 50 sets of laws. Republicans attempted to ban domestic regulation of AI last year, but critics rejected the idea of ​​doing so without creating a national standard addressing a number of concerns, such as the use of malicious deepfakes to influence elections.

Trump intervened last month with an executive order calling for “the least restrictive national policy framework possible for AI.”

In 2024, the Senate passed the Children Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (known as COPPA 2.0) by an overwhelming vote of 91 to 3. Then the bills, opposed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union as too broad, died in the Republican-led House. Today, a key House committee is considering a smaller set of bills aimed at protecting children from online dangers. But it remains to be seen what can pass the full House — and what the Senate, which has shifted to Republican hands since previous bills passed, can handle.