Congress ended 2025 in a holding pattern, with appropriations unresolved, no legislative response to the Department's interagency agreements, and significant open questions about the year ahead—including what Congress will do, if anything, as the administration continues to restructure ED without statutory authority. Education stakeholders heading into 2026 face compounding uncertainty across funding, program administration, and federal oversight.

The House passed the Secure Rural Schools Reauthorization Act, the Senate passed the Ensuring VetSuccess on Campus Act, and the House Education and Workforce Committee advanced four higher education transparency bills—while the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee marked up eighteen bills addressing student and youth interactions with social media, data, and AI, signaling an intensified congressional push on digital safety governance. Separately, the Department convened negotiated rulemaking on Workforce Pell.

The House passed three bills targeting foreign influence—primarily from China and the Chinese Communist Party—in K–12 public schools, including measures requiring parental notice of foreign entity involvement, prohibiting school contracts with the Chinese government, and cutting federal funding for schools that receive Chinese government support. The week's activity came alongside the Department's rollout of a new HEA Section 117 foreign-gift disclosure portal, signaling accelerating federal scrutiny of foreign influence across both K–12 and higher education.

With the shutdown resolved, Congress returned to a broad legislative agenda spanning K-12 nutrition, student mental health, loan transparency, civil rights protections, and online safety for minors—including substantive hearings on the future of college, CTE pathways, and services for foster youth. The Energy and Commerce Subcommittee simultaneously advanced a package of eighteen bills targeting student and youth interactions with social media, data, and artificial intelligence.

After 44 days, the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history ended when the Senate passed H.R. 5371 by 60–40 and the House approved it 229–209—with provisions restoring back pay to affected employees, reversing RIFs initiated during the shutdown, and pausing further reductions through January 30. The President signed the bill into law that evening.

On Day 41 of the shutdown, a bipartisan group of Senators announced a deal to fund the government through January 30—while Head Start preschools began to close after November 1 federal grant payments failed to arrive and 1 in 8 Americans faced disruption from the ongoing SNAP litigation. The funding deal still faced procedural hurdles in both chambers and did not include the ACA premium tax credit extension Democrats had sought.

Thirty-three days into the shutdown, Congress continued to fail on continuing resolution votes while Head Start preschools began to close after November 1 federal grant payments did not arrive—and courts stepped in to force continued SNAP disbursements to recipients in several states. Both chambers introduced bills to address the downstream harms of the shutdown, though none advanced.

With the government shutdown entering its third week—at 19 days, the third-longest in U.S. history—the Senate continued to fail on procedural votes to advance a continuing resolution as the federal judiciary announced its funding would be exhausted by October 20. The longest shutdown on record (35 days, 2018–19) remained ahead as negotiations stalled.

As the government shutdown stretched on, the Senate confirmed four key Department of Education nominees—including the new Assistant Secretaries for Elementary and Secondary Education, Civil Rights, Legislation, and Postsecondary Education—all by a party-line vote of 51–47. The nominees will be sworn in once the government reopens, while the Senate's 11th and 12th procedural votes on continuing resolutions again failed to advance.

The government shutdown began after the Senate took six failed votes on two competing continuing resolutions—the Republican H.R. 5371 and the Democratic S. 2882—with negotiations at an apparent standstill through the week. With the shutdown in its sixth day and Representative Jeffries challenging Speaker Johnson to a debate, the path to reopening the government remained entirely unclear.

With Congress largely out of session in the final week of the fiscal year, the shutdown calculus was complicated by the President cancelling a budget negotiation meeting with Democrats and the Supreme Court temporarily allowing the administration to impound $4 billion in previously appropriated foreign aid—weakening Congress's constitutional power of the purse heading into the final days before October 1. Both chambers held only pro forma sessions; no long-term spending action was taken.

During the final full week of the fiscal year, the House passed a short-term continuing resolution but the Senate rejected it 44–48—and separately failed to advance the Democratic alternative—making a government shutdown at the October 1 deadline highly likely. The Senate also spent time on the National Defense Authorization Act and crime legislation related to the District of Columbia, as negotiations on a CR continued without resolution.

With only two and a half weeks remaining in the fiscal year, both chambers turned to appropriations—with House and Senate Appropriations Committees reporting their FY2026 Labor, HHS, and Education spending bills—though a government shutdown at October 1 appeared increasingly likely given the compressed legislative timeline. Education-related provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act also advanced, including limitations on federal research grants to institutions with certain foreign partnerships.