Johnson, Jeffries Prepare for House Showdown Over Senate’s Homeland Security Funding Deal With White House

House Republicans and Democrats are set to have an ugly sparring match this week over funding for the Department of Homeland Security after Senate Democrats struck a deal with the White House to temporarily keep the department open. House Democrats, led by Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, are insisting that reforms at ICE and Border Patrol be made immediately — not several weeks from now. Mr. Jeffries and nearly all of his Democratic colleagues voted against the DHS spending bill last month, with only seven Democrats breaking ranks to join with Republicans to narrowly pass the bill and send it to the Senate. Since then, some of those seven Democrats say they regret voting for the bill, which passed the House just days before Minnesota nurse Alex Pretti was killed by Border Patrol agents.Senate Democrats won a small victory last week when they forced their Republican colleagues to simply extend DHS funding for another two weeks, rather than boost the department’s budget until the end of the fiscal year on September 30. Senators are hoping to negotiate reforms at DHS — including an end to agents wearing masks and the requirement that they wear body cameras — with President Trump for the next two weeks. Because the House passed a full-year spending bill, however, lawmakers in the lower chamber will now be forced to vote on the Senate’s two-week continuing resolution. Speaker Mike Johnson says it could be a heavy lift. “When you’re talking about agents [wearing masks], the reason that ICE agents wear masks is to protect their own identities and protect their own families,” Mr. Johnson told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. In a separate interview with “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Johnson again made clear that the agency reforms that Democrats are demanding are not likely to fly with House Republicans. “We have to allow ICE to do its job. We have to allow Border Patrol to do its job, and we’re gonna make sure they have the funding to do that,” he said. The trick here for Mr. Johnson is that he is now facing some intense pushback from his right flank. Typically, the House can easily pass these kinds of funding bills under what is known as “suspension of the rules.” That means that House members can proceed quickly to debate and pass legislation so long as two-thirds of members voting agree, not unlike how the Senate votes to end debate. Because of the opposition from both Democrats and Republicans, however, Mr. Johnson will have to go through the Rules Committee in order to set parameters for debate, which would then require a simple majority vote in the House.With nearly all Democrats opposed to the two-week extension of DHS funding, Mr. Johnson cannot afford to lose many Republicans this coming week. Conservatives are banding together to make their own demands just as Senate Democrats did. Many lawmakers want the SAVE America Act — a bill to require proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote, though voting rights activists say the various requirements would put unnecessary burdens on both would-be voters and election officials — attached to the DHS bill on Monday. “We’re working with the White House and the speaker on the best processes … We’ll see if that becomes a part of the appropriations fights,” the bill’s author, Congressman Chip Roy, told Fox News over the weekend. “We certainly believe it oughta move forward.”“To my friends in the House GOP: Please put DHS funding back in,” the lead Senate sponsor, Senator Mike Lee, wrote on X Saturday. “Then add the SAVE America Act.”“Attention @HouseGOP members: If anyone whipping the vote for these appropriations [bills] tells you they can’t attach the SAVE (America) Act to it … they are lying to you. We can put THE SAVE (America) ACT in the rule,” Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna wrote on X Sunday.

Johnson, Jeffries Prepare for House Showdown Over Senate’s Homeland Security Funding Deal With White House

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