The federal government is in a partial shutdown, and the House may struggle this week to pass a second iteration of a funding package needed to end it amid opposition from lawmakers in both parties.
The Senate amended the measure Friday to replace a full-year funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security with a two-week stopgap to give lawmakers time to hash out policy disagreements over immigration enforcement.
The broader package would complete the delayed fiscal 2026 appropriations.
“Our intention is by Tuesday to fund all agencies of the federal government except for that one,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And then we’ll have two weeks of good-faith negotiations to figure it out.”
Mr. Johnson does not have a clear path to passing the Homeland Security package because of opposition in both parties.
Some House Republicans are upset that their Senate Republican counterparts let Democrats renege on a previously negotiated deal to fund the Homeland Security Department through the remainder of the fiscal year.
“This is what happens when Republican leadership works with Democrats to pass massive appropriations bills while ignoring conservative priorities,” said Rep. Greg Steube, Florida Republican.
House Democrats do not feel bound by the deal that Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, negotiated to buy more time for bipartisan talks on putting guardrails on President Trump’s deportation force.
“If we’re contemplating a two-week freeze in order to get us to a place where we can see dramatic change, we want to understand that there’s an ironclad path forward to get those things done,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, said Saturday on MS Now.
Mr. Jeffries informed Mr. Johnson earlier that day that Democrats would not provide the necessary support for a two-thirds vote to fast-track passage of the spending package through a process known as suspension of the rules.
Mr. Johnson now must bring the measure to the floor under a process that will require Republicans to unite behind it.
The Rules Committee is scheduled to meet Monday afternoon to craft the rules for the spending package and other legislation that the House will consider this week.
Some Republicans want the Rules Committee to attach the SAVE America Act, an election integrity measure, to the spending package.
The ploy is designed to send the package back to the Senate and force Democrats to enact a requirement for proof of citizenship to register to vote, reinforced by voter ID at the ballot box.
“The only way these appropriations [bills] pass out of the house is if the SAVE (America) Act is attached to them,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Republican, posted on social media.
Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican, and Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican, introduced the SAVE America Act last week. It is an updated version of their previous bill to ban noncitizens from voting that adds a requirement for voters to show identification each time they cast a ballot.
Mr. Lee is urging House Republicans to restore the full-year Homeland Security funding in the spending package and add the SAVE America Act.
Mr. Roy said in a Fox News interview Saturday that Republicans were working with the White House and Mr. Johnson “on the best processes” for advancing the election integrity measure.
“We’ll see if that becomes a part of the appropriations fight,” he said. “We certainly believe it ought to move forward. And we certainly believe we ought to stand with ICE.”
Mr. Johnson has not directly commented on the push to add the SAVE America Act, but he has made clear that he wants to advance the spending package to end the partial government shutdown.
“I have a lot of conversations to have with individual Republican members over the next 24 hours or so. We’ll get all this done by Tuesday, I’m convinced,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The speaker noted that the spending package still includes full-year funding for the departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, State, Transportation, and Treasury. The bill had broad bipartisan support when the House first passed it last month.
The only change is replacing the full-year Homeland Security spending bill with the two-week stopgap to allow for renewed negotiations on immigration enforcement.
“The president is leading this,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s his play call to do it this way. He has already conceded that he wants to turn down the volume, so to speak, and make sure this is done in an appropriate way.”
Mr. Trump said he does not want “another long and damaging government shutdown” that could slow economic growth.
“Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote,” he posted on social media last week.
The Senate voted 71-29 to pass the amended spending package with the Homeland Security stopgap, but only after a rocky 24 hours in which senators denied consent for a quick vote on the package to extract demands.
Most of the concessions needed to earn their votes were in the form of amendment votes that failed but highlighted their concerns.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, was the most vocal of the holdouts. He secured a commitment from Republican leaders to ensure his bill to end sanctuary city policies will get a vote as an amendment to the full-year Homeland Security Department funding bill.
The measure would prohibit state and local officials from impeding federal immigration enforcement and impose criminal penalties if illegal immigrants they release from custody go on to kill or seriously injure someone.
Mr. Graham also secured his leaders’ support for a future vote on legislation to provide an adjudication process for conservative groups whose phone records were under surveillance as part of the Biden-era Arctic Frost investigation.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said he wished Democrats had agreed to more than two weeks to renegotiate and pass the full-year Homeland Security Department spending bill.
“We’ll stay hopeful, but there are some pretty significant differences of opinion,” he said.
The Democrats’ demands include forcing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to end roving patrols and use judicial warrants. They also want to require agents to unmask, wear body cameras and carry identification.
Mr. Johnson said he was in the Oval Office with Mr. Trump last week when the president held a phone call with Mr. Schumer and White House border czar Tom Homan to discuss the Democrats’ proposals.
He said Mr. Homan accepted some of the requests, such as ending roving immigration patrols and requiring federal agents to wear body cameras, but resisted the additional layer of bureaucracy that would come with requiring judicial warrants. He also noted the safety implications of requiring agents not to wear masks and to show identification.
“When you have people doxing them and targeting them, of course, we don’t want their personal identification out there on the streets,” Mr. Johnson said. “And so we’ve got to work through this in a meaningful way, in a thoughtful way that comports with common sense.”
Mr. Schumer, asked about those concerns, did not relent on the demand.
“Given the brutality, given everything they’ve done, we need real ID, plain and simple,” he said, calling it unacceptable for “a law enforcement officer with no ID [to] pick someone up, throw them in a dark room, and they don’t even know who they are.”
