Republicans Seethe as DHS Talks Derail After Democrats ‘Retread’ Their Offer

Senate Republicans on Wednesday accused Democrats of not engaging in good-faith negotiations toward ending the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, leaving Republican leaders at a loss over how to end the 40-day-long impasse.

Republican lawmakers were visibly incensed after Democrats made their latest counteroffer, a package that centered around a list of demands that Democrats have clung to since early February. That came a day after Republicans offered the minority party a deal focused on funding the entirety of DHS outside of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s removal operations, which Democrats have called for repeatedly in recent weeks.

The latest horse-trading left top Republicans wondering where talks go now, as lawmakers try to strike a deal by the end of the week to avoid DHS employees missing yet another paycheck.

“The counteroffer’s a nonstarter. It’s absurd,” Sen. Steve Daines, one of four Republican senators who met with President Donald Trump on Monday to sell him on the framework for a deal. “Sadly, the Democrats didn’t just move the goalposts. They cut them down and threw them out of the stadium.”

Democrats made their latest offer around lunchtime on Wednesday, which included items Republicans have already labeled nonstarters. Among those were barring ICE agents from wearing masks during enforcement operations and an overhaul of the warrant process involved in immigration enforcement.

Republicans responded by holding a vote hours later on a bill to fund all of DHS, with an eye toward substituting the language with text lawmakers thought they were near an agreement on a day earlier. That vote failed to advance.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune had even expressed a hint of optimism shortly before the Democratic offer was made, telling reporters that he thought the plan they’d sold Trump on was still “workable.”

That tone took a sharp turn minutes later.

“There’s no point in doing that,” Thune said to the idea of making Democrats a counteroffer. “This is retreading ground that we’ve been treading for weeks, frankly, starting to go on months.”

Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told NOTUS she doesn’t understand why Democrats “raised a counteroffer” at all, “when essentially, we’ve accommodated all the top requests.”

“They’re clearly, and tragically, not bargaining in good faith,” Collins said of Democrats.

The latest back-and-forth comes at a crucial time for both sides, as not only are DHS employees set to miss another pay day Friday, but the upper chamber is slated to leave for a two-week-long recess around Easter and Passover.

Absent a deal, Thune has been weighing whether to keep members in town for another weekend session and potentially next week in order to cement a DHS deal. No decision has been made as of Wednesday, though numerous members are clamoring to stick around.

“We will stay here until we get it solved,” said Daines, a top ally of Thune.

Democrats have sung a different tune about the state of talks. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the two sides had come together on some of their ideas during weekend talks. However, those policy changes were not included in the Republican offer, leading to the continued standstill.

“This is nonsense,” Schumer said in response to Republican claims that he is engaging in goalpost shifting. “Democrats and the American people have been very clear from the beginning about what we need in order to move forward. We’ve been talking about ICE reforms from Day 1. These are not new demands. These are not surprise demands. They are not things we came up with yesterday.”

He continued: “They are common-sense reforms, reasonable reforms … and things Republicans know perfectly well we have been seeking since these negotiations began.” Schumer denounced charges that Democrats were being insincere. “For Republicans to now act as though Democrats have changed our position, as though we moved the goalposts, is poppycock.”

The comments come as trouble at airports has continued to worsen, especially during peak spring-travel season.

Top Transportation Security Administration official Ha Nguyen McNeill told a House hearing that some airports are experiencing employee call-out rates north of 40%, and that some airports may have to close due to the ongoing staffing shortages.

“At this point, we have to look at all options on the table. We don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing how we maintain our operations,” McNeill said. “And that does require us to, at some point, make very difficult choices as to which airports we might try to keep open and which ones we might have to shut down as our call-out rates increase.”

Overall, nearly 500 TSA employees have quit since the shutdown started — the second pay interruption they have experienced since the 43-day shutdown in the fall.