The effort to talk Senate Democrats out of denying Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding through a less aggressive tone and vague promises of executive action or future votes is not leading to any progress, Hill sources tell the Prospect, making a partial government shutdown by this weekend almost assured.
Republicans have made no move to separate out DHS funding from the other five appropriations bills that carry broad bipartisan support and would quickly pass. The House is out of session until next week, after the January 30 funding deadline for these six bills, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said nothing about bringing the House back early or about the murder of registered nurse Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection agents.
What concessions Republicans have made are all about optics instead of policy. Greg Bovino has been moved out of Minneapolis, replaced with border czar Tom Homan as if this is a Botha-for-Mandela swap. President Trump’s language is mildly less belligerent. Homan met with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) today and agreed to continue an “ongoing dialogue.”
For some reason, this is being treated like a series of major concessions by the president, even though the situation on the ground in Minnesota has hardly changed. None of it approaches Democratic demands as a condition of DHS funding. Those demands, for the moment, include a requirement for cooperation with state and local investigations into ICE and CBP misconduct; a return of CBP personnel to the border rather than interior enforcement; the end of “administrative warrants” as a pretext for entering homes; mandatory body cameras, positive ID for all enforcement officers and a ban on masks; and no enforcement in “sensitive locations” like schools or churches.
In addition, House Democratic leaders have said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem must be fired or they will begin impeachment proceedings. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” the leaders write.
Republicans have not moved to agree or even negotiate with Democrats on these points as of yet. Instead, they have suggested that the president could sign executive orders that respond to parts of the Democratic demands, or that future legislation could do so. Meanwhile, top appropriators like Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) have warned of the harm produced by a government shutdown.
Currently, there is a vote to proceed to the six-bill funding package scheduled for Thursday.
It is not the case that the funding bills are hopelessly bound together. The House passed the bills in multiple stages. A two-bill funding package known as the Financial Services/General Government appropriation and the National Security/State Department appropriation passed on January 14 with an overwhelming 341-79 vote. That was later combined with the final four bills, including the DHS appropriation.
There is nothing stopping the Senate leadership from putting that two-bill package on the floor and passing it quickly, whereupon it would go immediately to the president for his signature. The fact that this hasn’t come up as a possibility suggests that Republicans are content to hold the remaining funding hostage until they get everything they want from the DHS appropriation.
It’s not impossible that some dramatic action from Trump, like pulling out of Minnesota or forcing Kristi Noem to step down, could melt hearts inside the Senate and pull enough out to move forward on funding. But so far, that has not come close to happening. And Trump isn’t offering anything like that, at least not publicly.