US Senate fails for seventh time to advance bill to partly fund DHS | US Senate
The Senate has yet to advance a bill to fund part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has now been shuttered for nearly six weeks.
The latest vote came just hours after Donald Trump announced he would sign an executive order directing Markwayne Mullin, the DHS secretary, to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers during the shutdown, a move that could ease the immediate urgency for Congress to reach a deal as it heads toward a planned two-week break.
By a vote of 53-47, mostly along partisan lines, the Upper House fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill – marking the seventh failed attempt. Only Democratic Senator John Fetterman broke with his party to vote in favor of the bill. Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed a motion for reconsideration, allowing the bill to be brought up again.
Lawmakers remain deadlocked as they try to reach an agreement to fund affected parts of DHS, including the TSA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa), the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).
Thune billed the Republicans’ latest proposal as the party’s “last and final” offer, but it was ultimately rejected by Democrats, who have consistently demanded stronger guardrails on federal immigration enforcement after Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were fatally shot by police officers during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis in January.
As negotiations broke down Thursday, Trump invoked the national emergency to immediately pay 50,000 airport security workers affected by the shutdown. On Truth Social, the president said he would sign an executive order to “quickly stop the Democratic chaos at airports,” while adding that it “is not an easy thing to do, but I’m going to do it!”
Speaking to reporters, Thune said Trump’s order would alleviate “immediate pressure” but acknowledged it was a “short-term solution.”
According to multiple reports, Republican leaders in the Senate will draft language aimed at defunding DHS as much as possible, hoping to “push forward” the resolution and approve it by unanimous consent. “This is not the outcome we wanted, but unfortunately, Democrats have proven unwilling to support law enforcement,” Thune said in an email reported by Axios.
This week, Senate Republicans introduced a proposed bill that would fund shuttered DHS subagencies such as the TSA, but withhold money for enforcement and deportation operations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Their hope is to continue to pass this ICE funding, as well as money for the administration’s military campaign against Iran and parts of the Save America Act, through reconciliation — a process that requires only a simple majority in the Senate.
Democrats, for their part, countered with a measure combining DHS funding with a series of new reforms to immigration enforcement operations. GOP lawmakers quickly rejected the offer.
Earlier, the House passed a GOP-authored bill to reopen DHS for a third time. With a vote of 218-206, four Democrats in the lower chamber crossed party lines in favor of the funding measure.
Since ICE received $75 billion from Trump’s sweeping bill last year, it has been largely shielded from the funding shortfall that has hit other parts of DHS.
At a House Homeland Security hearing Wednesday, Ha Nguyen McNeill, the acting TSA administrator, said airports across the country are experiencing historic wait times and warned that TSA employees may have missed a cumulative $1 billion in paychecks this fiscal year due to repeated DHS shutdowns.
“Some sleep in their cars, sell their blood and plasma and take a second job to make ends meet,” McNeill said, adding that at least 40 percent of TSA staff don’t show up for work because they can’t afford to do so without pay. At the White House, Karoline Leavitt said nearly 500 TSA agents have resigned since the shutdown began last month.
Earlier, senators also failed to propose an amendment to the president’s popular bill that would require voters to show photo ID in elections. The amendment, sponsored by Republican John Husted, failed to overcome a filibuster and received no Democratic support. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said the amendment would “impose the strongest voter ID law in America.”
