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White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday he is not optimistic about reaching a new coronavirus relief deal before the end of September, predicting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will use the government funding cliff at the end of next month as leverage to strike a deal on pandemic aid. Speaking with POLITICO's Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer, Meadows said his staff had reached out to Pelosi's office Tuesday but added that he does not anticipate a response. The White House chief of staff said lawmakers from both parties have privately expressed to him a desire to make progress on coronavirus relief. The hold up, Meadows said he suspects, is that Pelosi is holding back her party's rank and file in order to secure more Democratic priorities in any legislation. (Choi, 8/26)

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Wednesday warned he did not expect a quick breakthrough on stalled coronavirus relief talks, floating the possibility that they could drag into an end-of-September government funding fight. Meadows, during a live interview with Politico, said he hadn't had any recent conversations with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), beyond his staff reaching out to hers on Tuesday. "I don't anticipate that we'll actually get a phone call," he said. (Carney, 8/26)

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday that the administration is eyeing executive action to prevent airline furloughs in absence of a deal with Congress on new coronavirus relief legislation. Meadows’s comments in a Politico Live event came a day after American Airlines said it would furlough or lay off some 19,000 workers starting in October unless the federal government steps in with billions more in relief for struggling airlines. Delta Air Lines also intends to furlough nearly 2,000 pilots effective Oct. 1, according to the pilots’ union. (Werner, Aratani and Stein, 8/26)

A federal judge in California on Wednesday halted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ effort to boost emergency coronavirus relief for private school students. The court ruling blocks DeVos from implementing or enforcing her rule in at least eight states and some of the nation’s largest public school districts. The secretary's policy requires public school districts to send a greater share of their CARES Act, H.R. 748 (116), pandemic assistance funding to private school students than is typically required under federal law. (Stratford, 8/26)