The White House asked Congress on Wednesday to approve $87.6 billion in new spending, most of it tied to the U.S. war on Iran, hours after President Trump summoned Senate Republicans to a Capitol Hill lunch that produced a shouting match with Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy and a late-night vote that killed a second war powers resolution.

The twin moves reset a fight that had slipped from the administration's grip 24 hours earlier, when four Republicans joined Democrats to pass the first concurrent war powers rebuke of a sitting president since the 1973 statute was enacted. By midnight Wednesday, Cassidy and his colleagues had reversed on a parallel measure, and Speaker Mike Johnson had a price tag for the next phase of Operation Epic Fury.

The funding request

The Office of Management and Budget letter to the House asks $67 billion for the Defense Department, including $21 billion for munitions, $17.3 billion for operational costs and $12.1 billion for classified programs, the BBC reported. About $300 million is earmarked for embassy and diplomatic-post security in the Middle East and South Asia after attacks earlier in the war. Another $11 billion would go to U.S. farmers and $1.4 billion to the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa.

The Pentagon's chief financial officer, Jules Hurst, told Congress last month the war had cost about $29 billion to date, a figure analysts and lawmakers say understates the damage. A ceasefire is in effect, but the budget office said the Pentagon needs to "rebuild stocks" after the strikes.

Inside the lunch

Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill shortly before arriving at the Capitol, posting that he would withhold his signature until Congress passed the SAVE America Act, a voter-citizenship measure GOP leaders say lacks 60 Senate votes. He urged senators to scrap the filibuster to pass it. Leadership resisted.

The meeting then turned to the war powers vote. CBS News reported that Trump told Cassidy to sit down after the senator tried to respond to him; Cassidy refused at first, then sat on his own terms. "He raised his voice. I lost my temper. That's not appropriate. It's the Irish in me, but I again matched his tone and his volume," Cassidy told reporters. "I make no apologies for standing up to the president," added the senator, who did not advance to his Louisiana primary runoff this year. Cassidy also said, per the BBC, that the campaign "was supposed to last four weeks, it's lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved."

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski arrived late and afterward criticized the housing-bill maneuver. "If he chooses to hold up his own agenda because he wants action on the SAVE Act, that's — I guess — his call. It is not helpful to him. It's not helpful to the country, and it's not moving the needle," she said. "If you don't have the votes, sir, you don't have the votes."

The reversal

After the lunch, Cassidy said on X he had received a "thorough briefing" from Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff. He then voted with Republican leadership to defeat a second war powers resolution, offered by Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, which would have carried the force of law. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who also lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, said the president "closed by preaching unity" but "spent the prior hour talking about things which were not exactly unifying."

Trump told reporters: "I think we had a really great meeting."

The counterpoint

The administration's case is that the fight is already winding down and the money is for cleanup, not escalation. A ceasefire between Washington and Tehran is in effect, and the OMB letter frames the bulk of the request as needed to "rebuild stocks" after the military strikes. Trump on Wednesday called the war powers measure "poorly timed and meaningless" and branded the four Republicans who broke with him "losers," telling NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte the dissenters "want to lose the war because they're stupid." By Wednesday night Cassidy himself said the briefing from Vance and Witkoff had assuaged his concerns, and he flipped his vote on the Kaine resolution — a move, the BBC reported, that Trump "welcomed."

The funding request goes to a House that has yet to schedule a vote, and to a Senate where the war polls poorly ahead of November. Cassidy's reversal held for one night; the appropriations fight will test whether it holds for an $87.6 billion ask.