WASHINGTON—The partial government shutdown is in full swing after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the White House agreed to pass five funding bills separate from contentious Department of Homeland Security funding.
The majority of the federal government shut down at midnight on February 1, after the Senate voted to carve Homeland Security funding out of its spending bill, which has yet to pass the House of Representatives. House Speaker Mike Johnson said on “Meet the Press” Sunday that he’s confident the shutdown will be brief, and he’s hoping to see it end by Tuesday.
“Our intention is by Tuesday, all agencies of the federal government, except for that one, and then we’ll have two weeks of good faith negotiations, to figure it out,” Johnson said. “Republicans are going do the responsible thing and fund the government.”
But it is unclear how many House Democrats will back the spending package, given that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was not part of the deal between the White House and Schumer, saying in a statement on Friday that the caucus “will evaluate the spending legislation passed by the Senate on its merits and then decide how to proceed legislatively.”
The House Rules Committee is set to meet Monday afternoon in hopes to move the package forward. The new deal swaps DHS funding for a continuing resolution that covers money for the agency through Feb. 13, whereas the other bills covered funds through the end of the fiscal year in September.
Homeland Security funding became a flashpoint for Democrats after the killing of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis. Democrats are calling for sweeping changes to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, with some going so far as to call for the total defunding of Homeland Security.
Their defunding efforts may be fruitless, as the immigration agencies were largely funded by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Still, Democrats seem hopeful that they can leverage the entire department’s funding, which includes the budgets of FEMA and TSA, to push for reform. Schumer and other Democrats are asking for sweeping changes to ICE and Border Patrol, including the ending of masking for agents and the use of judicial warrants as opposed to administrative ones, which could make some arrests much more difficult, The Daily Wire reported.
“There is currently not a structure in the federal government to add millions of judicial immigration warrants,” a federal official told The Daily Wire. “This effort is being pushed to roadblock the deportation agenda of the president.”
Prior to Pretti’s death, the House had approved all of the government spending bills and sent them to the Senate. There are 12 appropriations bills in total, six of which President Donald Trump has already signed.
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