Senate Republicans Work to Convince Trump to Back Their DHS Shutdown Off-Ramp

Senate Republicans believe they’ve made progress on a deal to overcome the Department of Homeland Security funding impasse after a White House meeting on Monday.

Sen. Steve Daines, one of several lawmakers who attended, told NOTUS the session with President Donald Trump, border czar Tom Homan and newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was “very productive” and nearly two hours long.

Daines said Republicans would be working on a “framework with our Democratic colleagues” addressing funding for the agency and “getting that deal done this week, and then a subsequent reconciliation bill where we will have components of the SAVE Act in that as well.”

“It’s kind of a two-step process,” he added, referring to action on a voting bill the president has demanded Congress enact.

Sen. Katie Britt, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, who also attended the meeting, said they emerged with a solution. She declined to elaborate further.

“I am going to be working through the night,” she said. “Hopefully we can figure out how to land this plane.”

The Senate is struggling to overcome a blockade that has been put up by Trump, who is insisting lawmakers enact the SAVE America Act, a bill requiring people to have proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. The legislation has little chance of becoming law, but conservative supporters have pushed leadership to change Senate rules to get it through, which has been a nonstarter. And the president was pushing to link it to a deal to end the DHS shutdown.

When asked late on Monday if negotiators had a solution to the DHS puzzle, Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated he was hopeful, but he was not prepared to announce anything official.

“I don’t think anything at this point, but very positive, productive,” he told reporters. When asked if they had a solution, he responded: “I hope so.”

Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said discussions would continue, adding that she thinks “we’re making progress” and that she’s “more optimistic that by the end of the week we will fund the Department of Homeland Security.”

The Monday action was a sign of renewed urgency for members, especially with DHS employees set to miss yet another paycheck by week’s end and the upper chamber itching to leave for a scheduled two-week recess.

That led four key Senate Republicans — Daines, Britt, Lindsey Graham and Bernie Moreno — to head to the White House to meet with the president on Monday afternoon to plot out the path forward.

That sit-down came amid the White House’s cancellation of potential talks between GOP negotiators and top Democrats, with administration officials signaling they wanted to wait until Mullin was confirmed Monday night.

As Mullin left the Capitol after his confirmation, he didn’t address any solutions to the funding impasse.

“You’ll have to talk to the senators about that,” he said.

The department-wide shutdown, which has stretched into its second month, has grown worse by the day as hours-long delays and security lines have become commonplace at airports across the country. The president added fuel to the fire by hastily assigning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to assist Transportation Security Administration agents.

“A deal’s always possible, but it’s not very encouraging when Thune embraces our position and says, ‘Let’s do this on a bipartisan basis,’ and the president says, ‘No,’” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, referring to reporting that indicated GOP leaders were seeking an off-ramp to end the shutdown, with Trump spurning that attempt.

“There’s some frustration,” he added.

The latest talks also came as Republicans kept up consideration of the SAVE America Act, the voting bill that has galvanized conservative activists and influencers despite the GOP’s inability to marshal it through Capitol Hill via conventional means.

Republican leaders have maintained that the SAVE America Act has no future beyond the current floor push, as it cannot get the requisite 60 votes and not enough Republicans are willing to change the Senate process to get it through the chamber

“He tweeted it out and he keeps saying it. So he’s got a view about, you know, connecting everything to the SAVE America Act. … My view is we should deal with the immediate crisis in front of us and figure out how to fund the government, but we’ll see,” Thune told reporters earlier on Monday. “The idea that we would have to guarantee its passage in order to open the government, I think you all know that’s not a realistic outcome.”

There are questions abound, however, about putting parts of the voting measure in a budget reconciliation package that would need a simple majority to pass. Some Senate Republicans have already acknowledged as much, though they seem willing to see if it’s possible.

Sen. John Kennedy, a leading proponent of a second reconciliation bill, called on members last week to give it a go. He admitted he was in the minority on the attempt.

“You don’t know till you try, and we haven’t tried,” Kennedy said on Wednesday about the measure that would curtail mail-in voting and seek to codify voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements, among other things.

The ongoing DHS deadlock kicked off in January when federal immigration enforcement agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.

The president further complicated the DHS funding push over the weekend by saying he’d send ICE agents to more than a dozen airports in order to aid TSA agents, who have been forced to work for more than a month without pay, leading to increased absences and some to outright quit after two shutdowns in less than a half of a year.

The attempted pressure point is showing few signs of pushing Democrats to the table, though. Multiple members indicated they were not only frustrated by Trump’s move but questioned what good it would even do.

“The people with TSA, the unions and such, have said these ICE agents are not skilled, they’re not trained, they’re not experienced at dealing with our job. Our job’s different than their job,” said Durbin, who represents Chicago O’Hare International Airport, which is one of the airports where ICE agents have been fanned out.

“What I fear the most is that the ICE agents will revert to form and decide that they’re gonna start asking questions of people who look Hispanic, for example,” he continued. “It would be terrible and the image that they create is not a positive one.”