Congress
Capitol agenda: Shutdown threat weighs on Senate lunches
Senate Republicans and Democrats will head into separate lunches Wednesday for their first in-person conference meetings on how to avoid a partial shutdown at the end of the week.
No one wants to see the vast majority of federal agency funding lapse at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. But partisan divisions over the Homeland Security bill are reaching the brink amid a weather-shortened week.
Senators have a few days to turn the tide.
— Democratic demands: Democrats expect to come out of lunch with a firmer wish list of policy changes they want incorporated into the Homeland bill.
“The things that we care most about are getting an independent investigation and ending these roving patrols that are terrorizing Minneapolis,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Homeland funding panel. “And solving these problems [with] secret police and getting some identification of body cams.”
A new polling memo circulating among senators, obtained by Blue Light News, is providing some encouragement for Democrats. The Searchlight Institute found that “bipartisan majorities of voters oppose ICE’s lawless tactics, including detaining U.S. citizens (73 percent), entering people’s homes without warrants (79 percent), and failing to wear clearly identifying uniforms (70 percent).”
— GOP looks to the White House: Republicans are trying to come up with alternative solutions to address frustrations with President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda.
Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he’s encouraging dialogue between the administration and Senate Democrats to reach “some mechanism whereby you don’t have to change the bill or split it out and have to send something back to the House.” He acknowledged members of his own conference would block any attempt to strip DHS funding from the six-bill appropriations package.
Appropriations Chair Susan Collins said Tuesday she’s also hoping for an off-ramp via executive action. The Maine Republican is in the middle of the fight to hold the funding package together as she navigates a DHS enforcement surge in her own state and a likely reelection campaign.
— Will the House return? Democrats want House leaders to bring the chamber back from recess to be ready to pass amended legislation — but Republicans say they have no plans to do so. One senior House Democrat told Blue Light News it “seems inevitable at this point the House will be involved” and doubted the administration could do anything to convince Senate Democrats to pass the bill in its current form.
“I know the House loves recess — they do,” Murphy said. “The House does not like doing their jobs, but sometimes they might actually have to show up when the country is exploding.”
The Senate will vote Thursday on advancing the six-bill package as is. Thune said it’s “to be determined” what happens if that vote fails.
What else we’re watching:
— Rubio testifies on Venezuela: Secretary of State Marco Rubio will appear before Senate Foreign Relations at 10 a.m. to give his first public testimony to Congress since the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Expect questions from lawmakers in both parties about the administration’s plan to get to democracy in Venezuela and who will profit from Venezuelan oil.
— ACA compromise? Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said Tuesday he’s expecting the bipartisan group of senators working to revive expired Affordable Care Act subsidies to release bill text “hopefully in the next day or so.” It comes after lead GOP negotiator Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) spoke with senators on the floor Tuesday evening about the health care framework.
Democrats in the negotiating group were initially caught off guard by Moreno’s apparent prediction of text, since they had neither seen nor signed off on anything, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the private talks. Other lawmakers were pessimistic Tuesday about the state of the discussions, which have been overshadowed by the fight over DHS funding after Saturday’s fatal shooting of Alex Pretti.
Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill, Katherine Tully-McManus, Jennifer Scholtes, Adam Wren and Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.
Congress
Mike Johnson says House can end government shutdown ‘by Tuesday’
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is confident Congress can end the partial government shutdown “by Tuesday” despite steep opposition from Democrats and turmoil within the GOP conference.
Johnson is under pressure to unite his caucus, with lawmakers raising concerns about funding for the Department of Homeland Security as the Trump administration faces scrutiny over its nationwide immigration crackdown that has at times turned violent.
House Republicans are hoping to take up the $1.2 trillion funding package passed by the Senate on Tuesday following a House Rules Committee meeting Monday. The partial shutdown began early Saturday.
GOP leadership in the House originally hoped to pass the bill under suspension of the rules, an expedited process that requires a two-thirds-majority vote, but Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Johnson on Saturday that Democrats would not help Republicans acquire the necessary support for the spending bill.
“I’m confident that we’ll do it at least by Tuesday,” Johnson said in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “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. I think that’s very unfortunate.”
The Senate voted Friday to pass a compromise spending package after Senate Democrats struck a deal with President Donald Trump to extend DHS funding for two weeks. The move bought Congress more time to work out a compromise on reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal officers fatally shot two people in Minnesota earlier this month.
Speaking to host Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” Johnson acknowledged that “there’s been tragedies in Minnesota” — but he also blamed Democrats in the state for “inciting violence,” even as the Trump administration attempts to tamp down pressures in the state.
Johnson praised Trump’s decision to send White House border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, a step widely seen as a deescalation from the aggressive tactics favored by Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino.
“[Trump] was right to deputize him over that situation,” he said of Homan on NBC. “He has 40 years of experience in Border Patrol and these issues. So I think that this is going to happen, but we need good faith on both sides. Some of these conditions and requests that they’ve made are obviously reasonable and should happen. But others are going to require a lot more negotiation.”
Johnson pushed back in particular on Democratic calls to bar federal immigration enforcement officers from wearing masks and require them to wear identification, telling Fox’s Shannon Bream: “Those two things are conditions that would create further danger.”
He also signaled an unwillingness to negotiate on Democratic demands to tighten requirements for judicial warrants for immigration operations.
Still, House Democrats remained opposed to passing the funding package as is, with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) saying Sunday: “I’m not just a no. I’m a firm no.”
“I just don’t see how in good conscience Democrats can vote for continuing ICE funding when they’re killing American citizens, when there’s no provision to repeal the tripling of the budget,” Khanna said in a Sunday interview with Welker on NBC. “I hope my colleagues will say no.”
Jeffries also signaled Sunday that a wide gap remains between his conference and House Republicans, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the House must reach an agreement on judicial warrants “as a condition of moving forward.”
“The one thing that we’ve said publicly is that we need a robust path toward dramatic reform,” Jeffries said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The administration can’t just talk the talk, they need to walk the walk. That should begin today. Not in two weeks, today.”
Congress
Shutdown likely to continue at least into Tuesday
The partial government shutdown that began early Saturday morning is on track to continue at least into Tuesday, which is the earliest the House is now expected to vote on a $1.2 trillion funding package due to opposition from Democrats and internal GOP strife.
House Republican leaders have scheduled a Monday meeting of the House Rules Committee to prepare the massive Senate-passed spending bill for the floor. According to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, the procedural measure teeing up a final vote would not happen until Tuesday, with final passage following if that is successful.
That’s one day later than GOP leaders had hoped. Their previous plan was to pass the bill with Democratic help under suspension of the rules, a fast-track process requiring a two-thirds-majority vote.
But that plan was complicated by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling Speaker Mike Johnson in a private conversation Saturday that Democratic leadership would not help Johnson secure the 70 or so Democratic votes to get the measure over the line, according to the two people and another person granted anonymity to discuss the matter.
The Tuesday plan remains tentative as GOP leaders scramble to navigate tensions inside their own conference, which could make passing the procedural measure difficult. Some conservative hard-liners, for instance, want to attach a sweeping elections bill to the package.
Jeffries said in a MS NOW interview Saturday that Republicans “cannot simply move forward with legislation taking a my way or the highway approach” while noting that House Democrats are set to have “a discussion about the appropriate way forward” in a Sunday evening caucus call — first reported by Blue Light News.
He did not rule out that Democrats might support the Senate-passed spending package, which funds the majority of federal agencies through Sept. 30 while providing a two-week extension for the Department of Homeland Security — including controversial immigration enforcement agencies.
Democrats, Jeffries said, want “a robust, ironclad path to bringing about the type of change that the American people are demanding” in immigration enforcement.
Congress
Here’s what federal programs are headed for a (possibly brief) shutdown
Government funding is set to lapse at midnight Friday for the military and many domestic programs, but cash will continue to flow at a slew of federal agencies Congress already funded.
House leaders are aiming to send a funding package to President Donald Trump Monday, days after the Senate passed the legislation just before the deadline to avert a partial shutdown.
The effect on most federal programs is expected to be minor, and employees who are furloughed would miss just one day of work if the House acts on schedule — which is not assured.
This time, many of the services that have the greatest public impact when shuttered — like farm loans, SNAP food assistance to low-income households and upkeep at national parks — will continue. That’s because Congress already funded some agencies in November and earlier this month, including the departments of Energy, Commerce, Justice, Agriculture, Interior and Veterans Affairs, as well as military construction projects, the EPA, congressional operations, the FDA and federal science programs.
Still, the spending package congressional leaders are trying to clear for Trump’s signature next week contains the vast majority of the funding Congress approves each year to run federal programs, including $839 billion for the military.
Besides the Pentagon, funding will lapse for several major nondefense agencies beginning early Saturday morning.
That includes federal transportation, labor, housing, education and health programs, along with the IRS, independent trade agencies and foreign aid. The departments of Homeland Security, State and Treasury will also be hit by the shutdown.
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