The Senate will aim to vote Friday on an agreement to fund most of the federal government and buy more time to debate new accountability measures for immigration agents, but many agencies will still shutter this weekend.
Even if the agreement passes the Senate, the House will not consider the spending legislation until early next week, though the effects are expected to be relatively limited compared with the extended shutdown last fall.
Senate Democrats said Thursday that Republicans had agreed to their demand to break off funding for the Department of Homeland Security from a larger spending bill after federal immigration authorities killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The agreement would fund DHS at existing levels for two more weeks to give the two parties time to try to hash out a deal to impose new restrictions on immigration enforcement that Democrats are seeking.
Both Republican and Democratic senate leaders said Friday that they’re working toward another agreement to pass the funding bills.
President Donald Trump said in a social media post Thursday that Republicans and Democrats had “come together to get the vast majority of the Government funded until September, while at the same time providing an extension to the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote,” he added.
But the Senate did not begin voting on the agreement on Thursday night. At least one senator, Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), put a hold on the process. Unanimous consent is necessary in the Senate for the chamber to bypass its rules and vote quickly, allowing any one senator to hold up the process.
Graham has said he wants to protect a measure that allows senators — but not House members — to sue over having their phone records obtained without their knowledge. The current appropriations package would reverse that measure, which was drafted in response to an investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Graham said he wants a vote on expanding the provision to apply to any group or individual whose phone records are obtained in the investigation.
Graham is also demanding a vote on his legislation that would criminalize “sanctuary cities,” arguing that Republicans should stand up on what he called “an 80 percent issue” for the party.
“We cannot live in a country this way — where you get to pick and choose the laws you don’t like,” he said in a floor speech Friday. “If you want to reform ICE, count me in. But if you don’t get to the root cause of the problem, then you’re really not serious about solving it.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) followed Graham with a floor speech slamming “a handful of Republicans who are refusing to let us move forward.”
One Democrat, Sen. Michael Bennet (Colorado), also criticized the deal. Bennet vowed to vote against the legislation because he had “no confidence the Trump administration will participate in good faith negotiations” to enact the restrictions on DHS that Democrats have demanded, though he did not say whether he planned to hold up the package.
A short funding lapse is all but assured even if the Senate passes the bill before the midnight deadline because the House, which is scheduled to be out of town until Monday, would need to pass it, too.
Getting any agreement through the narrowly divided House could be challenging for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), as conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus said they would oppose changes to the existing bill before Trump called for them to support an extension. But House Republicans are likely to support it as the president has requested, two senior House Republican aides said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“We may inevitably be in a short shutdown situation,” Johnson told reporters Thursday night. “But the House is going to do its job.”
House Democrats haven’t publicly said whether they will support the separate DHS funding extension agreed upon by Senate Democrats and the White House, though they do plan to support the other five funding bills.
“We have to deal with the issue of reining ICE and the Department of Homeland Security in with the fierce urgency of now,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) told reporters Friday. “A two-week window — we’ll evaluate whether that’s sufficient time.”
If the House passes the five funding bills and the separate funding extension for DHS, lawmakers will pivot to striking a deal on policy changes for ICE and Border Patrol agents’ conduct during immigration raids before the DHS stopgap runs out on Feb. 13.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) was optimistic that the two parties could negotiate a deal in “less than two weeks.”
“If Republicans are serious about the very reasonable demands Democrats have put forward on ICE, then there is no good reason we can’t come together very quickly to produce legislation,” Schumer said in a floor speech Friday.
Senate Democrats demanded that Republicans agree to tighten warrant rules, implement a code of conduct for ICE and other federal agents, require independent investigations of misconduct, remove masks on agents, and require they wear body cameras.
Senate Republicans say they will have their own demands in negotiations, while some House Republicans say they won’t agree to any changes to the DHS bill.
“We’re going to land this plane, and then we’re going to figure it out,” said Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama).
Kadia Goba and Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.
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