The Senate will aim to vote on Friday on an agreement to fund most of the federal government and buy more time to debate new accountability measures for immigration agents, as a midnight deadline looms for a partial shutdown.
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.
President Donald Trump said in a social media post 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. 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.
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.
“If you were abused, you think you were abused, your phone were illegally seized, you should have your day in court,” Graham told reporters Thursday.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) blamed Republicans for the impasse as he left the Capitol Thursday night.
“Republicans need to get their act together,” Schumer told reporters.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said Republicans and Democrats had issues to resolve before the bill could pass, which he hoped to do Friday.
“Right now we’ve got snags on both sides,” Thune told reporters as he left the Capitol.
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.”
Kadia Goba contributed to this report.
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