House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said Sunday that he is “confident” he will have enough support from Republicans in the House conference to end the partial government shutdown by Tuesday.
In an interview with NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Johnson said the House will vote to reopen the government “at least by Tuesday.”
“We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town, and because of the conversation I had with Hakeem Jeffries, I know that we’ve got to pass a rule and probably do this mostly on our own,” Johnson said, referring to the minority leader as he looked to blame Democrats for the second shutdown of President Donald Trump’s second administration, which began early Saturday.
After the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis left two U.S. citizens dead, Democrats have said they would not advance government funding measures unless changes were made to a funding bill for the agencies driving the Trump administration’s immigration policies, including the Department of Homeland Security. The department houses U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
On Friday, Congress missed a midnight deadline to approve six new spending bills because the Senate changed DHS funding measures after the House passed them. The Senate, however, quickly approved a bipartisan agreement backed by Trump to pass five major appropriations bills and a temporary two-week funding extension for DHS to buy time for additional policy negotiations.
Over the weekend, Johnson remained adamant that the House will move quickly to pass those measures when it returns to Washington on Monday, despite frustrations from conservative members of the Republican caucus and skepticism from House Democrats.
“We’ll have a lot of conversations to have with individual Republican members over the next 24 hours or so. We’ll get all this done by Tuesday,” Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I don’t understand why anybody would have a problem with this, though. Remember, these bills are bills that have already been passed.”
Johnson will need nearly all of the House GOP majority to pass the bills if Democrats refuse to support DHS funding. The speaker said he believed he could get the backing of his members, emphasizing that Trump “is leading this” and that it “is his play call to do it this way.”
The president, Johnson added, “has already conceded that he wants to turn down the volume” in the immigration enforcement operations, a change punctuated by his decision to send border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis last week to take control of the situation.
Johnson said the Trump administration has acknowledged to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) that some of the changes and processes that Democrats are demanding “are fine with them,” including a requirement for ICE agents to wear body cameras.
Johnson, however, said that while some of the proposed DHS revamps are “obviously reasonable,” he doesn’t think House Republicans will support Democrats’ demands that federal agents remove their masks and wear an ID while conducting immigration operations.
“There’s a lot of details in this, we could get deep in the weeds, but we will do that over the next two weeks,” he said on “Meet the Press.”
House Democrats have not committed to supporting the bipartisan agreement struck in the Senate, although they plan to support the other five funding bills. Jeffries (D-New York) told ABC News’s “This Week” that Democrats will meet Sunday afternoon to discuss “what we believe is the best path.”
“What is clear is that the Department of Homeland Security needs to be dramatically reformed,” Jeffries said. “Body cameras should be mandatory. Masks should come off. Judicial warrants should absolutely be required consistent with the Constitution, in our view, before DHS agents or ICE agents are breaking into the homes of the American people or ripping people out of their cars.”
When asked if he believes the administration will enforce the changes if they pass, Jeffries said that this is “an untrustworthy administration” but that the American people are strongly rejecting the violent immigration enforcement actions they’ve seen out of Minneapolis.
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