Republicans in Congress are fretting that President Donald Trump has given them “nowhere to go” in negotiations over funding the Department of Homeland Security.
Part of DHS has been shut down for more than a month, meaning employees at the Transportation Security Administration and others have not been paid. Security lines have been growing at airports around the country, and Trump has deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to assist TSA officers who are still working.
Democrats have demanded Republicans accept multiple reforms in exchange for their support on a bill to reopen DHS. However, Trump threw a wrench in those negotiations on Tuesday when he claimed that any deal lawmakers reach won’t be good enough for him.
“We’re going to take a good, hard look at it,” Trump said during a press conference. “But I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it.”
Multiple Republican lawmakers told Axios on Tuesday that they feel pinned in by Trump’s negotiation strategy.
“I can’t imagine why we’re doing something where everybody in the federal government is not getting paid while senators get paid,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Axios.
I don’t want to vote to defund ICE, and I don’t want to vote to cut ICE’s funding,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told the outlet. “I would hope that we would not, as Republicans, be defunding ICE.”
Other Republicans chided Democrats for allegedly “moving the goalposts” during negotiations.
“There is nowhere to go,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) told Axios. “They proposed this, and we said OK.”
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