Key negotiators circulated a potential deal Tuesday to end a five-week standoff over Department of Homeland Security funding and, among other things, pay beleaguered transportation screeners as mounting security lines snarl airports.

Nobody in Washington, however, seems too excited about it.

The framework brokered by a handful of Senate Republicans and the White House Monday got a cool reception from Senate Democrats, who said it does nothing to rein in immigration enforcement abuses at the center of the DHS funding impasse.

Conservative Republicans pushed back on the idea that some Immigration and Customs Enforcement funds would be left out of the agreement and pursued separately under the party-line reconciliation process, calling it a capitulation to Democrats.

Even President Donald Trump, who has gone back and forth on the DHS shutdown talks but hosted the White House meeting Monday evening where the latest proposal was hatched, gave the plan only a tepid endorsement in his first public comments on it Tuesday.

“We’re going to take a good hard look at it,” he said in the Oval Office, later adding, “They are getting fairly close. But I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it.”

The griping heard up and down Pennsylvania Avenue cast fresh doubt on whether Congress would be able to act this week to end the shutdown that started Feb. 14 — even as hourslong waits at some U.S. airports weighed heavily on lawmakers.

The Republican proposal would forgo about $5.5 billion in funding for Enforcement and Removal Operations under ICE, in lieu of agreeing to a series of constraints Democrats want to impose on DHS enforcement personnel.

Key Democrats rejected that tradeoff Tuesday. Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, said the new GOP offer “contains no reforms to ICE or Border Patrol” and “that’s not acceptable.”

Republicans had hoped to isolate the point of greatest contention, the conduct of DHS agents carrying out Trump’s mass detention and deportation agenda, while funding the rest of the sprawling department. But GOP leaders said they would not put fetters on agents whose salaries were not being funded under the bill.

“A lot of the reforms are contingent on funding for ICE,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “So if you’re not going to have funding, I don’t know how all of a sudden now they can demand reforms.”

ICE received $75 billion in last summer’s GOP megabill, leaving it largely immune from the funding lapse that has crippled other parts of DHS.

“The problem is that they have everybody at DHS right now doing immigration enforcement,” said Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who is the top Democrat on the Homeland Security funding panel but not central to the negotiations.

By funding other DHS agencies, Murphy added, “you’re providing money for immigration enforcement.”

The qualms are not just coming from Democrats.

Conservatives are strategizing behind the scenes to kill the framework because it leaves out ICE funding in the uncertain hope of passing it through reconciliation, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the private effort.

Some Republicans expect their right-flank colleagues to try to lobby Trump to tank the deal or demand changes, two of the people said.

A White House spokesperson gave the emerging plan only a lukewarm blessing Tuesday before Trump made his public comments. The president made clear he remains more invested in passing a partisan elections bill, the SAVE America Act, than cutting a deal to end the DHS shutdown.

The framework would pair the leftover $5.5 billion in ICE funding with some provisions of the SAVE America Act, though the strictures of the reconciliation process would severely limit the GOP’s options.

“I want to support Republicans,” Trump said. “Sometimes it’s awfully hard to get votes when you have Democrats that don’t want to have voter ID, they don’t want to have proof of citizenship, they don’t want to do anything about men playing in women’s sports.”

Ultraconservatives in the House are also assembling to oppose the proposal negotiated by GOP senators, warning their leaders against going around them to pass the agreement. Speaker Mike Johnson could make such a move using fast-track procedures if he had the necessary support from a critical mass of Republicans and Democrats to vault a two-thirds-majority threshold.

And there is a significant swath of the House GOP, including mainstream leadership allies, who consider the idea of not fully funding ICE a nonstarter.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats will offer a counterproposal to the GOP offer. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is expected to meet with Schumer Tuesday and gather with his caucus Wednesday morning before the offer is delivered.

“I can assure you it will contain significant reform in it,” Schumer told reporters Tuesday.

Murray, who has been meeting with White House officials, lamented that negotiations have been a moving target.

“It is awfully hard to find common ground with Republicans when it’s not clear that they have common ground amongst themselves,” she said Tuesday. “The only way we are going to get out of this mess is if we know that the president is on the same page as the Republicans.”

Top Republican senators are anxious to reach an accord to end the shutdown before the House and Senate are scheduled to adjourn later this week for a recess stretching into mid-April.

“We’re ready to go, OK? We’re ready,” North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven, a senior Republican appropriator, said Tuesday as he left Thune’s office. “So the Democrats need to join us now and get it done. I mean, we’ve bent over backward negotiating with them.”

Mia McCarthy, Meredith Lee Hill and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Sen. Rick Scott is suing a major government contractor for damages after his tax returns were leaked along with other prominent and wealthy figures, including President Donald Trump.

The Florida Republican on Monday filed a lawsuit against Booz Allen Hamilton, a management and technology consulting company, and a former employee of the contractor who was convicted of leaking the tax returns of Trump and other wealthy individuals to The New York Times and ProPublica.

“I am disgusted by the weaponization of government under President [Joe] Biden, and I look forward to Booz Allen being held accountable for its reckless failure to prevent its employee from unlawfully releasing the tax returns of thousands of people, including me and President Trump,” Scott posted on X about the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed in the Middle District of Florida and comes almost two months after Trump filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion. That lawsuit did not target Booz Allen or Charles Littlejohn — who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024. But the Treasury Department canceled contracts with the company in January — a situation that Scott’s lawsuit said proved that the company was culpable.

Scott’s 23-page lawsuit, which was first reported by Axios, contends that Littlejohn’s access to IRS system was made possible “solely through Booz Allen and its federal contracts with the Department of the Treasury and the IRS.” The lawsuit cites previous incidents with the company that point to failures that “did not occur in a vacuum.”

“The unlawful disclosure of plaintiff’s tax return was not merely the result of an isolated act,” the lawsuit states. “It was enabled by systemic safeguard failures and negligent supervision within the contractor framework under which Booz Allen operated.”

Booz Allen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Scott attended Littlejohn’s sentencing hearing back in 2024 and gave a victim impact statement where he criticized the terms of the deal reached between Littlejohn and federal authorities.

Scott is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, and his finances have repeatedly come under scrutiny since he first ran for office back in 2010. Before getting into politics, Scott ran Columbia/HCA — one of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chains — but he resigned amid an ongoing federal investigation. After his departure, the company wound up paying $1.7 billion in fines and damages to resolve allegations of fraud. Scott was never charged and has denied any wrongdoing.

Scott used his personal money to help finance his campaigns for public office, including his 2010 run for Florida governor and his 2018 defeat of incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson.

His lawsuit against Booz Allen seeks compensatory damages for loss of privacy and economic losses, including security and monitoring costs as well as punitive damages.

Scott’s lawsuit contends that the harm to him and others is “ongoing” because news outlets continue to hold up to 15 years of “confidential taxpayer information” and that he and “his family are concerned that their personal information could appear in yet another news story sometime in the future.”

President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that he plans to take a “hard look” at the emerging DHS funding deal but that he is unlikely to be “happy” with any agreement Republicans strike with Democrats.

It was the first time the president has weighed in publicly on the brewing agreement to fund the agency, as the White House signaled earlier Tuesday that the yet-to-be-finalized solution “seems to be acceptable.” A White House official cautioned that talks are ongoing to fund DHS more than five weeks after money lapsed.

“Well I’m going to look at it, and we’re gonna take a good hard look at it. I want to support Republicans. Sometimes it’s awfully hard to get votes when you have Democrats that don’t want to have voter ID, they don’t want to have proof of citizenship, they don’t want to do anything about men playing in women’s sports,” the president said from the Oval Office after Markwayne Mullin was sworn in to lead DHS.

The president also said he didn’t want to comment on the deal until he reviews it, adding that “they are getting fairly close. But I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it.”

Trump’s comments leave room for him to ultimately reject or support the emerging framework. Conservatives, who are skeptical of the potential agreement because it leaves out parts of ICE, are strategizing behind the scenes, according to three people with knowledge of their efforts granted anonymity to discuss them. Senate Republicans, in particular, are bracing for their right flank to try to get in Trump’s ear to tank the deal or demand changes, two of the people said.

And House GOP leadership is privately panning the forming agreement, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter. Some members argue it kills their leverage to force Democrats to fully fund DHS — and risks leaving them with a GOP revolt.

Speaker Mike Johnson, asked if he supported the forming deal in a brief interview Tuesday leaving the Capitol, replied: “I haven’t seen the details.”

Asked if it could get through the House, Johnson said: “Stay tuned.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters he hadn’t seen details of the forming deal yet but argued Democrats should fully fund DHS. He also declined to say whether the possible deal to leave out some ICE enforcement money could pass the House amid a GOP hard-liner rebellion.

“Those that are contorting themselves to do this, it’s just beyond stupid,” House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast (R-Fla.) said. “Just fund DHS, right?”

House GOP leaders are planning to hold a third vote on the stalled DHS funding bill that fully funds ICE on Thursday in an attempt to pressure Democrats.

Republican senators met with the president at the White House late Monday after he publicly rejected DHS funding without the SAVE America Act alongside it. The senators left the White House and began working on the framework, which includes an effort to pass some portions of the SAVE America Act through reconciliation.

Mullin said in the Oval Office that Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is “committed to making sure we get reconciliation through.”

“Because there’s nothing more important than the SAVE America Act,” Mullin said. “I mean, that’s what the American people want.”