President Donald Trump has delivered the State of the Union. Now the challenge for him is to make that message stick.

Several Democratic members of the Illinois congressional delegation have announced they would not attend the speech, citing their disapproval of the president.

The last bill still to be worked out covers the Department of Homeland Security where Democrats are demanding more restrictions on enforcement operations.

Democrats are refusing to provide the votes House Speaker Mike Johnson needs to push the package forward as they try to rein in the Trump administration’s deportation operations after the shooting deaths of two Americans in Minneapolis.

As the country reels from the deaths of two protesters at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis, irate Senate Democrats laid out a list of demands on Wednesday, including that officers take off their masks and identify themselves and obtain warrants for arrest.

“ICE has not made any city that they’ve gotten into safer,” U.S. Sen Tammy Duckworth said.  “In fact, in every city they’ve gone into, they’ve created chaos.”

The Trump administration is now seeking to control Venezuela’s oil resources and its government, but the war powers resolution would require congressional approval for any further attacks on the South American country.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune will be forced to answer from some in their own party over whether to reassert the legislative branch’s role in war-making alongside critical votes on health care and government spending.

President Donald Trump, whose loss of the House halfway through his first term led to two impeachments, is trying to keep history from repeating — and doing so in ways his opponents say are intended to manipulate next year’s election landscape.

Senators rejected a Democratic bill to extend the subsidies for three years and a Republican alternative that would have created new health savings accounts — an unceremonious end to a monthslong effort by Democrats to prevent the COVID-19-era subsidies from expiring on Jan. 1.

Top military officials faced questioning over the deployments for the first time at the hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. They were pressed by Democrats over the legality of sending in troops, which in some places were done over the objections of mayors and governors.

The three top Democrats vying to become the party’s nominee for U.S. senator in Illinois have released proposals detailing how they plan to make life more affordable for Americans.

The decisive, bipartisan work in Congress Tuesday further showed the pressure mounting on lawmakers and the Trump administration to meet long-held demands that the Justice Department release its case files on Epstein.

The shutdown magnified partisan divisions in Washington as Trump took unprecedented unilateral actions — including canceling projects and trying to fire federal workers — to pressure Democrats into relenting on their demands.

The 41-day shutdown could last a few more days as members of the House, which has been on recess since mid-September, return to Washington to vote on the legislation.

The agreement does not guarantee the health care subsidies will be extended, as Democrats have demanded for almost six weeks.