House Republicans intend to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, according to an aide for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

A House Oversight subcommittee Tuesday morning advanced a motion from Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett seeking approval of the subpoena.

“The Committee will seek to subpoena Ms. Maxwell as expeditiously as possible,” the committee aide said in a statement. “Since Ms. Maxwell is in federal prison, the Committee will work with the Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons to identify a date when Committee can depose her.”

The move comes as the Justice Department is also seeking to meet with Maxwell, the associate of the late-disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for child sex trafficking and other crimes.

“This deposition will help the American people understand how Jeffrey Epstein was able to carry out his evil actions for so long without being brought to justice,” Burchett said in a statement.

Democratic leaders from both sides of the Capitol met Tuesday night to define their government funding demands — avoiding explicit ultimatums to their Republican counterparts with 10 weeks left before federal cash lapses.

Emerging from their closed-door meeting, party leaders took pains to show unity in their ranks after Senate Democrats caved in March to a government funding patch Republicans negotiated without any input from the minority party.

“House and Senate Democrats are in complete and total alignment,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters after the meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The two leaders privately huddled before bringing in a larger group of Democratic leaders.

Democrats are ready to join bipartisan funding negotiations with their Republican counterparts in good faith, the Democratic leaders said, as the Senate moves forward this week with debate on a funding bill with buy-in from both sides of the aisle. But they knocked House Republicans for forging ahead with partisan funding bills that would cut the budgets of most federal agencies.

“House Republicans are in fact marching us toward a possible government shutdown that will hurt the American people,” Jeffries said.

The leaders warned that funding negotiations could be complicated by Republicans’ embrace of clawbacks packages like the $9 billion rescissions bill Congress cleared last week and President Donald Trump’s moves to withhold funding Congress already approved.

While Democrats “want to pursue a bipartisan, bicameral appropriations process,” Schumer said, “the Republicans are making it extremely difficult to do that.”

Democratic leaders have privately discussed the need to focus on how government funding affects “people,” rather than how Republicans are undermining the government funding “process,” according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the private talks.

“We are all united in making sure that we’re doing the right thing for the people we represent,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, said after the Tuesday meeting. “They’re worried about their housing, their health care, whether or not they can put food on the table. And our process here is to make sure that we are doing the right thing and funding the programs that they count on to be able to support their families.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, said this is the worst appropriations process she has seen in her more than 34 years in Congress.

“It has not been what we have experienced,” DeLauro said. “There’s always been that give and take to pass the bills.”

The Senate cleared the first hurdle Tuesday toward passing a government funding bill meant to keep federal cash flowing for several federal agencies beyond September.

The 90-8 vote was a major bipartisan overture in cross-party government funding talks strained by the GOP’s partisan moves to cut and boost federal cash without Democratic buy-in, while President Donald Trump withholds billions of dollars more that Congress approved in bipartisan votes.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah was the only Republican to vote “no,” joined by other Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff of California, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Peter Welch of Vermont. Welch’s fellow Vermonter, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, also opposed moving ahead with consideration of the package.

But the bipartisanship is not guaranteed to last. Though Democrats helped overcome Tuesday’s hurdle, they aren’t committed yet to helping pass the bill, which will at the very least contain funding for the Department and Veterans Affairs and military construction projects. And as lawmakers stare down the Sept. 30 government shutdown cliff in just 10 weeks, fiscal conservatives and the White House are again calling for Republicans to abandon funding negotiations with Democrats.

Ahead of the procedural vote Tuesday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer praised the Senate’s veterans funding bill as containing “some........

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