Republicans in Congress Agree on Deal To Reopen Homeland Security, Restore TSA Airport Security Funding

After seven weeks of infighting, Republicans have finally come to an agreement on how to move forward with reopening the Department of Homeland Security without involving Democrats. At President Trump’s urging on Wednesday, House Republicans now plan to go along with Senator John Thune’s strategy of funding all of DHS minus ICE and Border Patrol, which will be dealt with at a later date. Mr. Thune last week faced intense backlash from the House GOP and many prominent conservatives. In the middle of the night, he asked unanimous consent on the floor to pass a bill to reopen DHS with the exception of ICE and Border Patrol deportation operations. The House quickly rejected that proposal, with Speaker Mike Johnson calling it a “joke.”Now, Messrs. Johnson and Thune are on the same page. “In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House will be following through on the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process,” the heads of both chambers said in a joint statement. Through reconciliation, Republicans can fund ICE and Border Patrol for years to come so long as they have simple majorities in both chambers. Democrats have already signaled that they will vote for Mr. Thune’s bill to reopen all other aspects of the department through the regular appropriations process. The two leaders say they were forced to take this path once it became clear that Democrats would not budge in their demands for significant reforms at ICE and Border Patrol.“We cannot allow Democrats to any longer put the safety of the American public at risk through their open border policies, so we are taking that off the table,” Messrs. Thune and Johnson wrote, likely killing any hope Democrats had for immediate changes at immigration enforcement agencies. According to a report from Punchbowl News, the Senate plans to pass the bill to reopen parts of DHS by unanimous consent on Thursday. Their decision to go down this road came at Mr. Trump’s urging, despite his previous opposition to the plan by the president himself. In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he wants the reconciliation bill to fund ICE and Border Patrol on his desk by June 1. “[W]e are going forward to fund our incredible ICE Agents and Border Patrol through a process that doesn’t need Radical Left Democrat votes, and bypasses the Senate Filibuster (which should be repealed, IMMEDIATELY!), working in close conjunction with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Leader John Thune,” the president wrote Wednesday. “In the meantime, we will continue to use funding from THE GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL … to ensure that ICE and Border Patrol Agents are paid ON TIME, and IN FULL,” Mr. Trump declared. “Immigration Enforcement will continue, and our Border will remain secure.”The shutdown at DHS is already the longest partial government shutdown in American history, and long lines at airport security checkpoints are turning the politics of the funding impasse toxic. A CBS News-YouGov poll last month found that only 31 percent of Americans believed that demanding reforms at ICE and Border Patrol was worth having the shutdown. The first step in Messrs. Thune and Johnson’s plan — to reopen all parts of the department except for ICE and Border Patrol — will almost certainly require Democratic votes. When it appeared last week that Mr. Thune’s legislation doing that would pass the House by a wide, bipartisan margin, it was the House Freedom Caucus which convinced Mr. Johnson to not put the bill on the floor. After Messrs. Thune and Johnson announced that they would take up Mr. Thune’s bill once again, some conservatives began expressing displeasure. “Funding for ICE and CBP must never be separated from DHS funding,” Congressman Keith Self, a member of the Freedom Caucus, said Thursday. “If Republicans isolate it, they’re handing our border and ICE agents straight to the radicals who will defund and dismantle them every chance they get.”

Republicans in Congress Agree on Deal To Reopen Homeland Security, Restore TSA Airport Security Funding

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