Congress

Capitol agenda: Senate heads into doomed DHS votes

Published

4 months ago

February 12, 2026

A DHS shutdown is coming Friday night, and there’s no telling how long it could last.

The White House on Wednesday night sent Congress the legislative text of its immigration enforcement counterproposal, a White House official and two people granted anonymity to disclose the private action told Blue Light News. But key Democrats have already said they don’t believe the administration is serious enough about reigning in the immigration agencies, all but guaranteeing a funding lapse despite the text exchange.

— State of play: Senators are headed into doomed DHS appropriations votes Thursday. Majority Leader John Thune teed up a vote to advance the House-passed DHS bill. Once that inevitably fails, Republicans plan to try to pass at least one continuing resolution, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss unannounced plans.

“It doesn’t look like we’re going to stick the landing … so we’ll have to go to Plan B,” Thune told reporters Wednesday evening.

Republicans want another stopgap that lasts between four to six weeks, but haven’t made a final decision about what they will try to clear Thursday. But they’d need Senate Democrats to advance any such measure, and the minority party said Wednesday they had no interest in cooperating on a stopgap.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared Democrats won’t support a CR after refusing to rule one out throughout the week. Other Democrats whose votes would likely be necessary — Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada — told Blue Light News Wednesday they won’t back a funding patch either.

“ICE is shutting down until we put guardrails,” Rosen said. “ICE should be acting with the same rules, uniform code of conduct, like the FBI and our state and local police … We are just asking what every other law enforcement agency abides by.”

ICE is among the DHS agencies that would be least affected by a shutdown. That’s because it receives a combination of mandatory funds, revenue from fees and billions of dollars from the GOP megabill President Donald Trump signed into law in 2025.

— Why a shutdown could drag: Congress is in recess next week, and several senators are eager to get out of town today to make it to the Munich Security Conference or to campaign in their home states — regardless of the state of DHS talks.

“I’m going to go home and I’m packing for Munich and I’m packing for Alaska,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. “That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it.”

Once the shutdown starts, it could take weeks for the public to notice, giving lawmakers time before public pressure ramps up to end the standoff.

TSA screeners, for example, would miss their first full paychecks mid-March, leading to a gradual increase in wait times for travelers during the peak of spring break. FEMA has enough funds — about $7 billion — to buoy the agency for at least a month or two during a shutdown.

DHS officials could also pay active-duty Coast Guard members for several months using a pot of money from the 2025 megabill, which was replenished after last year’s shutdown ended. The Secret Service also received money from the legislation that it could tap in the event of a shutdown.

“It does take the public a longer time to figure it out,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told Blue Light News Wednesday. “[But] I don’t know that the length of this, if there is a shutdown, is going to be based on how long it takes people to feel the effect. I think it’s more going to be governed by when we can find the reforms that are sufficient to people’s concerns.”

What else we’re watching:

— Rosen’s Epstein resolution: Rosen is introducing a resolution Thursday that would force senators to go on the record over whether President Donald Trump should grant clemency to Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate.

If the resolution passes, it would be nonbinding but symbolically significant in declaring the Senate’s official position against a pardon or clemency for Maxwell, even as her attorney has dangled such a step in exchange for her testimony.

— Notable hearings: It’s the Senate Homeland Security panel’s turn to hear testimony from DHS officials, including Todd Lyons, acting director for ICE, at 9 a.m. The Senate Armed Services Committee will hear testimony from Defense Department officials on American drones at 9:30 a.m. And at 10 a.m., the crypto world will tune into SEC Chair Paul Atkins’ testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee as the industry pushes for a revamp of financial regulations.

Jordain Carney, Myah Ward, Mia McCarthy and Declan Harty contributed to this report.

Congress

GOP leaders cancel Friday votes as House agenda hangs in balance

Published

2 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republican leaders have canceled planned Friday votes as GOP hard-liners continue threatening to block legislative action over an elections bill that is stalled in the Senate, according to a notice sent to members Thursday.

Members are expected to leave town after a 1 p.m. vote Thursday, and it’s possible they might not return Monday as planned: Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to discuss the legislative agenda with President Donald Trump at an afternoon meeting in hopes of brokering a solution that will allow the House to resume voting next week.

If not, the House could join the Senate on an extended recess, not returning till mid-July, two people granted anonymity to describe internal conversations said.

Congress

Raskin launches discharge effort to formally block ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’

Published

3 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is launching a campaign to force a floor vote on legislation that would formally block the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The so-called No Carte Blanche Act — a tongue-in-cheek nod to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — also would also explicitly bar payouts from the Judgement Fund, a pre-existing account for settlements with the United States, to people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

While Blanche, who will sit for a confirmation hearing July 15 to run the Justice Department in a more permanent capacity, recently told lawmakers that the administration was abandoning the effort amid bipartisan backlash, he has refused to put that pledge in a written declaration to Congress.

“This is why Congress must act to comprehensively shut down this shameful shakedown once and for all,” Raskin, of Maryland, said in a statement. “The people’s representatives must decide whether to uphold the rule of law and protect taxpayer dollars—or stand aside as this unprecedented corruption spins out of control.”

Raskin is attempting to compel a floor vote on his bill through a discharge petition, where 218 signatures in support will require Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the measure up for a vote. It’s a maneuver members of both parties have deployed with success in recent months due to the GOP’s slim majority — and it’s possible it could work this time, too, with a small number of House Republicans on record opposing the fund.

It would likely face an uphill battle getting the necessary 60 votes in the Senate to become law, however: An earlier attempt from Democrats to block the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” from going into effect failed in a 50-49 vote.

The fund was created out of a settlement from President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the federal government over the leak of his tax returns. While it was purportedly intended to provide financial compensation to individuals deemed victims of “lawfare,” critics worried it was designed to reward Trump’s allies.

Also as part of the settlement agreement, Trump, his family and businesses would be freed from any current audits of their taxes. Raskin’s legislation would also block that provision.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Johnson tries to clean up Trump’s Hill mess

Published

5 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s obsession with the SAVE America Act has hurled Congress into indefinite gridlock.

Senators are gone until July 13 after starting their Independence Day recess a few days early.

Now House Republican lawmakers are looking toward Speaker Mike Johnson, who will Thursday head to the White House to try to convince the president to salvage the GOP’s legislative agenda.

The president’s insistence Congress pass the controversial election security legislation has ground both chambers to a halt.

The deadlock threatens to derail a host of other legislative efforts Republicans and the White House hoped to complete in the coming weeks, including a sweeping reconciliation bill filled with potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in Iran war military funding, billions of dollars in relief for farmers, fiscal 2027 funding bills and the annual defense policy bill.

“I’d like to celebrate victories, not come up with reasons why we failed,” Sen. Kevin Cramer said in an interview, joining other Republicans in venting frustration after Trump scrapped a planned signing of a major housing affordability bill Wednesday.

“We’ve demonstrated a lot of dysfunction lately,” he said.

Wednesday’s explosive lunch with Trump and GOP senators probably didn’t help.

“The president came to the Capitol to do what he thinks Senate Republican leadership can’t do: flip votes on SAVE and nuking the filibuster,” a senior Senate GOP aide told Jordain.

“He left with the same number of votes that existed when he arrived — possibly fewer.”

Now eyes are on Johnson, who has lost control of the floor as hard-liners demand the Senate pass the elections overhaul.

He’s keeping the House in session ahead of his 2 p.m. Trump meeting in hopes of salvaging plans to put several bills on the floor this week — including a pair of fiscal 2027 spending measures.

But if Johnson and Trump can’t reach a compromise, GOP leadership may cancel all votes for the remainder of the week and next week, too.

That would further imperil their plans for another party-line reconciliation bill and the $88 billion supplement funding request the White House transmitted Wednesday.

What else we’re watching:

— JOHNSON’S PITCH FOR RECON 3.0 FALLS SHORT: House GOP leaders are trying to make good on their promise to advance a long-shot, party-line package of conservative priorities by arguing it’s the only chance to pass pieces of Trump’s doomed elections bill. So far, their pitch is falling short. Members who attended a meeting with House Budget Republicans Wednesday argued the REAL ID grant program Johnson proposed was no substitute for enacting the full SAVE America Act. And fiscal hawks on the panel warned they would oppose any budget resolution unless it’s paid for on a yearly basis, and without budgeting gimmicks.

— TRUMP’S $88B ASK FOR IRAN WAR, FARM AID: The White House sent Congress Wednesday a much-awaited request for emergency funding to cover military operations in Iran, farm assistance and disaster assistance. But the proposal could complicate House Republicans’ pursuit of a third party-line spending package, which was supposed to be centered around $350 billion in defense funding that Democrats wouldn’t support. The request for tens of billions of dollars in extra war spending comes as the House Appropriations panel Wednesday advanced a $1.1 trillion base budget plan for the Pentagon. Taken together, the three efforts represent a record-breaking roughly $1.5 trillion military budget, about a 50 percent hike from this year’s level.

Jordain Carney, Mia McCarthy, Meredith Lee Hill, Connor O’Brien and Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.