Conservatives Push for Drastic Action as GOP Leaders Fight Among Themselves Over DHS Funding

As House Republicans volley over how to reopen the Department of Homeland Security amid the longest partial government shutdown in history, GOP lawmakers are weighing the best move to fund key law enforcement agencies without shooting themselves in the proverbial foot. Whether it be a continuing resolution, a reconciliation bill, or nuking the nuclear option by eliminating the filibuster altogether, each choice offers its own risks and rewards, most notably whether going it alone without Democrats will pay off at the ballot box.While a late-night breakthrough appeared at hand before Congress left Friday for a two-week recess, Republicans still find themselves at odds with one another. Majority Leader John Thune ushered through a last-minute unanimous consent vote to open up the department minus funding for the disputed Immigrations and Custom Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol agencies. House Republicans, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, called the move a “joke” that will never reach the House floor.But with Mr. Thune constrained by the reality of the 60-vote threshold to end debate in the Senate — and mounting consequences from a six-week pause in payments to DHS employees — something’s gotta give soon. The question is whether that’s Republican resolve, congressional tradition, or Democratic concessions.“We need some common-sense Democrats to come along with us,” Congresswoman Lisa McClain, the number four House Republican, said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “We are not going to go back to the Biden administration policy where we have open borders. It’s just not going to happen.”So far, no Senate Democrat except for Senator John Fetterman has broken from their party to vote on a funding bill that would enable federal law enforcement officials to pursue illegal immigrants. Even the Senate’s most endangered Democrat, Senator Jon Ossoff, who is up for re-election in Georgia this year, has voted no. Mr. Thune has kicked around the idea of funding DHS through the reconciliation process, which would require only a simple majority of senators to vote for passage. The problem with that, however, is that it would likely become a nasty intraparty fight, just as it was with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. With only a one-seat majority in the House, any small band of lawmakers could hold the process hostage in order to add their pet policies. Senator Ron Johnson is pushing for reconciliation, which would enable the majority Republicans to fund all of DHS without Democrats, though it could take weeks or even months, especially now that President Trump has made additional demands of congressional Republicans to include in the final bill his SAVE America Act requiring voter ID. That would likely sink the legislation as the reconciliation process prohibits add-ons that are not budget-related. Mr. Johnson suggested reconciliation, arguing that Democrats will never back down because they have already created “martyrs” in two citizen protesters killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. “They got two martyrs and then they’re using those martyrs as their excuse to try and defund law enforcement, to defund the very agencies that are designed to clean up the mess they created,” Mr. Johnson told “Sunday Morning Futures.” “That’s who Democrats are. Republicans need to get united and we need to make sure we blame Democrats because that is where the fault lies.”Ms. McClain and other House leaders, however, say reconciliation is a gamble that the GOP would be wise to avoid. “I’m not going to roll the dice on passing another reconciliation bill with our national security. We’re gonna fund it,” she said Sunday, suggesting lawmakers instead vote for a short-term continuing resolution so the government can pay workers while Congress hashes out disagreements. “Let’s pass a clean CR for 60 days, since we’re in the middle of negotiations.”“Let’s stop taking hostages while we negotiate,” she added. Senator Rick Scott has advocated for abolishing the 60-vote filibuster altogether. He told The New York Sun that another reconciliation process would be too messy, and it likely would not lead to a successful passage of the SAVE America Act. During a speech at CPAC in Texas this weekend and in a follow-up post on X, Mr. Scott argued that eliminating the filibuster would avoid another “bad deal” like one Republicans gave to Democrats earlier this year in a separate funding fight. “We need to blow up the filibuster!” he wrote. “It’s time to start passing commonsense policies with a simple majority vote and STOP Democrats from holding up President Trump’s America-first agenda.”Democrats attempted to move forward with filibuster “reform” during their trifecta control of Washington in 2021 and 2022, leading Republicans like Mr. Scott to argue that the GOP should do away with it before Democrats get the chance again. Mr. Scott, Mr. Trump, and other GOP lawmakers are well aware that they will not have 60 votes in the Senate any time soon, so eliminating the procedural hurdle to pass every part of their agenda is worth it. So far, the politics of this impasse don’t seem to be hurting any one group. According to one of the few polls available about this DHS fight, 31 percent believe Democrats’ fight is worth a shutdown while 36 percent believe the demands for reforms is not worth a shutdown. One-third of poll respondents said they are unsure what Democrats are asking for in the debate.

Conservatives Push for Drastic Action as GOP Leaders Fight Among Themselves Over DHS Funding

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