By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House on Friday passed a short-term spending bill to extend government funding for seven weeks and avoid a partial government shutdown on Oct. 1, but prospects looked dimmer in the Senate, where the two parties show no signs of budging on the matter.

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The bill would generally continue existing funding levels through Nov. 21. Democratic leaders are adamantly opposed and are threatening a government shutdown if Republicans don’t let them have a say on the measure, as some Democratic support will be needed to get a bill to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.

The vote was 217-212.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana had few votes to spare as he sought to persuade fellow Republicans to vote for the funding patch, something many in his conference have routinely opposed in past budget fights. But this time, GOP members see a chance to portray the Democrats as responsible for a shutdown.

“We were very careful. We put no partisan measures in this. There’s no poison pills. None of that,” Johnson said leading up to the vote.

In a sign the vote could be close, Trump weighed in, urging House Republicans to pass the bill and put the burden on Democrats to oppose it. GOP leaders often need Trump’s help to win over holdouts on legislation.

“Every House Republican should UNIFY, and VOTE YES!” Trump said on his social media site.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said that in opposing the continuing resolution, Democrats were working to protect the health care of the American people. He said that with Republicans controlling the White House and both branches of Congress, “Republicans will own a government shutdown. Period. Full stop.”

The House vote now sends the bill to the Senate where Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the Senate will vote on the measure along with a dueling Democratic proposal. But neither is expected to win the 60 votes necessary to advance.

Senators could then potentially leave town until Sept. 29 — one day before the shutdown deadline. The Senate has a scheduled recess next week because of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.

The Democratic proposal would extend enhanced health insurance subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, plus reverse Medicaid cuts that were included in Republicans’ big tax breaks and spending cuts bill enacted earlier this year.

“The American people will look at what Republicans are doing, look at what Democrats are doing, and it will be clear that public sentiment will be on our side,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who has repeatedly threatened a shutdown if health care isn’t addressed.

Democrats on both sides of the Capitol are watching Schumer closely after his last-minute decision in March to vote with Republicans to keep the government open. Schumer argued then that a shutdown would be damaging and would give Trump and his White House freedom to make more government cuts. Many on the left revolted, with some advocates calling for his resignation.

The vote in the spring also caused a temporary schism with Jeffries, who opposed that particular GOP spending bill and said he would not be “complicit” with Schumer’s vote.

The two Democratic leaders now say they are united, and Schumer says things have changed since March. The public is more wary of Trump and Republicans, Schumer says, after the passage of Medicaid cuts.

Most Democrats appear to be backing Schumer’s demand that there be negotiations on the bill — and support his threats of a shutdown, even as it is unclear how they would get out of it.

“Look, the president said really boldly, don’t even talk to Democrats. Unless he’s forgotten that you need a supermajority to pass a budget in the Senate, that’s obviously his signal he wants a shutdown,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.

While the Democratic measure to fund the government has no chance of passage Friday, it does give Democrats a way to show voters their focus on cutting health care costs.

“There are some thing we have to address. The health insurance, ACA, is going to hammer millions of people in the country, including in red states,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine. “To me, that can’t be put off.”

Republicans say the blame would be clearly on the other side if they can’t pass a bill — and are using Schumer’s previous arguments against shutdowns against him.

Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said: “Senator Schumer himself said that passing a clean CR will avert a harmful and unnecessary shutdown. Now he wants to cause a harmful and unnecessary shutdown.”

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

LEAVENWORTH, Wash. (AP) — Authorities say they have found remains they believe are Travis Decker, an ex-soldier wanted in the deaths of his three daughters, in the mountains of Washington state.

The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Thursday that it was processing the site with the help of the Washington State Patrol crime scene response team. They will follow up with DNA analysis, it said.

“While positive identification has not yet been confirmed, preliminary findings suggest the remains belong to Travis Decker,” the statement said.

Decker, 32, has been wanted since June 2, when a sheriff’s deputy found his truck and the bodies of his three daughters — 9-year-old Paityn Decker, 8-year-old Evelyn Decker and 5-year-old Olivia Decker — at a campground outside Leavenworth.

Three days earlier he failed to return the girls to their mother’s home in Wenatchee, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Seattle, following a scheduled visit.

Decker was an infantryman in the Army from March 2013 to July 2021 and deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2014. He had training in navigation, survival and other skills, authorities said, and once spent more than two months living in the backwoods off the grid.

More than 100 officials with an array of state and federal agencies searched hundreds of square miles, much of it mountainous and remote, by land, water and air during the on and off search. The U.S. Marshals Service offered a reward of up to $20,000 for information leading to his capture.

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Last September, Decker’s ex-wife, Whitney Decker, wrote in a petition to modify their parenting plan that his mental health issues had worsened and that he had become increasingly unstable. He was often living out of his truck, and she sought to restrict him from having overnight visits with their daughters until he found housing.

An autopsy determined the girls’ cause of death to be suffocation, the sheriff’s office said. They had been bound with zip ties and had plastic bags placed over their heads.

By LINDSEY BAHR, Associated Press

On Nov. 8, 2018, the day one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history burned the town of Paradise, California, and killed 85 people, a school bus driver was sent to pick up 22 elementary school students to take them to safety. The Camp Fire was quickly spreading, communications were down and what was supposed to be a straightforward mission turned into a harrowing five-hour ordeal.

It’s these events that are dramatized in “The Lost Bus,” which opens in select theaters Friday before streaming on Apple TV+ on Oct. 3. Turning a recent, real-life tragedy (even the heartwarming stories that emerge from the ashes) into Hollywood entertainment requires a deft touch. Lean too far into the melodrama, and it risks resembling a made-for-TV movie. Keep it too clinical and it becomes a news segment.

But filmmaker Paul Greengrass, who has thrilled audiences with his Jason Bourne movies, taken them inside the Maersk Alabama hijacking and United flight 93, effectively toes that line. In “The Lost Bus,” he and co-screenwriter Brad Ingelsby have made an old-fashioned disaster movie that is captivating, frightening and startlingly moving.

Matthew McConaughey plays that bus driver, Kevin, who is having a very bad day already. His dog is terminal, he’s got bills he can’t pay, he’s taking care of his elderly mother in the months after his estranged father died and he’s just had an awful fight with his teenage son (a small, but effective performance from McConaughey’s actual son Levi).

This image released by Apple TV+ shows filmmaker Paul Greengrass, center, during the filming of “The Lost Bus.” (Apple TV+ via AP)

Kevin just can’t seem to catch a break and is feeling sorry for himself, dealing with his boss, annoyed calls from his ex-wife and a teenager who woke up with a bad fever. Then he starts noticing the plumes of smoke in the distance. He’s on his way to deliver medicine to his son when the call comes in over the radio: Is any bus driver in the area available to deliver 22 children to a safe location? You can feel the agony, and slight annoyance, as Kevin waits for a beat hoping in vain that someone else is available.

Greengrass and Ingelsby smartly interweave Kevin’s lousy morning with the beginnings of the fire, showing the methodology of the competent first responders attempting to manage a situation that is quickly spiraling out of control. Greengrass sustains a feeling of dread for the duration of the film, a white-knuckle experience that only gets more stressful when the children are added to the equation.

When Kevin gets to the school, he’s not in any mood to gently walk the scared kids through this situation gently, insisting that a teacher, Mary ( America Ferrera ) come along for the ride to handle them. Kevin is not a likely hero. He’s barely even a reluctant one. He’s simply a down-on-his-luck guy who showed up and, ultimately, did something extraordinary.

This isn’t a superhero story, however he is treated with more empathy than, say, Tom Cruise’s bad dad in “War of the Worlds.” There is an interesting thread woven into the story about absentee dads and regret, that extends even beyond Kevin, his late father and his son.

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Watching Ferrara and McConaughey drive this school bus through the flames and collapsing power cables sometimes brings “Speed” to mind. Occasionally, it veers a bit too far into spectacle and you start to question just how much the action has been upped for audience excitement. Perhaps these things really did unfold as they’re presented, but at times it feels like you’re suddenly on the Universal Studio Tour.

Still, it’s impossible to take your eyes off the screen, away from the inferno and the sense of our own smallness and helplessness to “battle it,” whatever that is supposed to mean. There is certainly a version of this story, adapted from Lizzie Johnson’s novel “Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire,” that could have focused on the firefighters. They do get a spotlight here, and the fire chief gets to say that these burns are only getting worse every year. But if you’re looking for that movie, perhaps you should turn to Joseph Kosinski’s “Only the Brave.”

“The Lost Bus” is about a few ordinary people in an impossible situation just trying to survive. While it’s not hard to wring emotion out of an audience watching kids in peril, it also, in some ways, gets right to the very heart of the matter.

“The Lost Bus,” an Apple Original Films release in select theaters Sept. 19 and streaming on Apple TV+ on Oct. 3, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “language.” Running time: 129 minutes. Three stars out of four.

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — When we make mistakes at work, it can lead to a cycle of negative thinking.

The damaging thoughts swirl: “I’m an impostor.” “I’m not smart enough.” “I’m failing at my job.”

Feeling like an impostor — doubting one’s own abilities despite a track record of success — is common, especially among women and members of marginalized groups. Even on days when everything’s going right, it can be hard to shift out of a cycle of self-doubt.

But there are ways to interrupt that downward spiral.

Many people have found cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of talk therapy, helpful to examine internal monologues such as “I’m going to say the wrong thing” or “I’m not good enough” — and replace them with neutral or positive mantras.

“What we do in cognitive behavior therapy is help people identify these negative thoughts, and then we teach them to evaluate those thoughts and see how accurate they are,” said Judith Beck, president of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, based in Pennsylvania.

“If they’re not accurate, we discuss what’s a more realistic perspective on this,” she said.

To reach students with social, emotional and behavioral challenges, Randolph Public Schools, a district outside of Boston, held a recent seminar about helping children reframe their negative feelings using cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT.

“We want our students… to really have the mindset that they can do things confidently,” said Alpha Sanford, chief of development and student services, who started the initiative.

During the training, Christin Brink, an assistant principal for special education, thought to herself, “Wow, I need this just as much as the kids do.”

“Being a younger administrator in this role, it’s something new to me,” Brink added. “A lot of times I’ll have impostor syndrome, and I’ll make a choice that I later regret.”

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Why we might focus on the negative

If you find yourself having negative thoughts frequently, you’re not alone. There are evolutionary reasons for it.

“When we were cavemen, it was very important for us to be alert for danger,” Beck said. Preparing for the worst possible outcome helped people stay alive. Some worries — such as “I don’t have enough time to complete this project” — can motivate people to get things done, she said.

But lingering on what’s going wrong can be unhealthy. We sometimes filter out positive reinforcement, downplaying recognition we’ve received and overemphasizing mistakes, said Kristene Doyle, director of the Albert Ellis Institute, a psychotherapy training organization based in New York.

Practicing your positive beliefs by saying them to yourself with force, vigor and frequency can help you build a healthier thinking muscle, she said.

Hold that thought. Is it really true?

One of the first steps to reframing unhelpful thoughts is to identify those that are recurring in your mind. Examine whether they have any validity. What evidence is there to support them?

“Telling myself ‘I’m not good enough to be here’ is only going to lead me down a path of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you make that worst-case scenario happen,” Doyle said. “What makes somebody good enough to be in the room? What makes somebody good enough to have a job?”

When someone is thinking they’re an impostor, “look for reasons why they’re not an impostor. What are their strengths? Why were they hired?” Doyle asked.

For example, when high school teacher Catherine Mason of New York was asked to reexamine a section of her lesson plan, she had some damaging self-doubt.

“I just heard, ‘You’re a terrible teacher. You’re so bad at this. Why can’t you just get it?’ And that was all internal,” Mason said. Acting out of fear, she rewrote the entire lesson plan, when she only needed to make minor changes.

Now, instead of jumping to the worst conclusion, she pauses to examine the thought. “What did they actually say to you?” she asks herself. “Did they say the actual words, ‘You’re terrible?’ Did they actually say, ‘You have to throw out the whole lesson?’”

People who are thinking “I’m not good enough” can challenge that thought by asking, “What does ‘good enough’ actually mean?” Doyle suggested.

Throw it under a microscope

Some therapists get creative when working with clients to identify negative feelings or beliefs. Avigail Lev, a psychologist with the Bay Area CBT Center in San Francisco, has clients write down the phrases, such as “They don’t value the work that I’m doing” or “I haven’t done enough to get a raise.”

After that, she leads clients through exercises to diffuse the strength of those thoughts, such as reading the sentences backward, counting the words in the statement, or writing the phrases on a cloud.

It can take time and practice to successfully reframe negative thoughts that have been replaying in our mind for years. When Renee Baker was studying architecture in college, professors and instructors frequently tore into her work. The critiques were designed to thicken her skin. But they had a lasting impact.

“There’s the self-doubt that comes with being told, literally, ‘You’re not good enough. Your ideas aren’t good enough. Your work isn’t good enough,’” said Baker, who’s now director of project management at Inform Studio, a design firm. “At the heart of a lot of my self-doubt is feeling like my voice, and what I think, what I believe, what I am passionate about, isn’t as important as the next person’s.”

So Baker worked with a therapist to challenge her damaging core beliefs, exchanging them for more neutral thoughts. At work, she practiced speaking up even when her throat felt tight with anxiety. Over time, she became less anxious and more comfortable sharing her ideas.

Find a replacement thought

You can get specific when you’re searching for alternative, healthier mantras.

“When we look at this sentence, ‘They don’t value the work that I’m doing,’ do you have any examples of when you felt your work was valued? Do you have examples of when people appreciated your work?” Lev asked.

You can also reframe your thoughts about other people who are part of your workday.

Eleanor Forbes, a social worker in Randolph Public Schools, helps teachers and administrators learn to apply CBT techniques. When staff members complain that a young person is being manipulative, she helps them reframe the thought. “How about we just say that this young person is just using survival skills?” she said.

Brink, the assistant principal, learned to reframe her own negative thoughts, saying to herself: “I made a lot of great choices today,” or “This was what went well,” and “Tomorrow we can try again with x, y and z.”

Having scripted phrases ready to go helps when negative thoughts resurface, she said.

“I’ve got this,” she tells herself. “One step at a time.”

Have you overcome an obstacle or made a profound change in your work? Send your workplace questions and story ideas to cbussewitz@ap.org. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well.