WASHINGTON, D.C. (TIP): House Republicans angrily rejected a bipartisan deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security and pushed through their own plan late Friday, putting themselves on a collision course with the Senate and extending the agency shutdown that has crippled U.S. airports, New York Times reports.
Revolting over an agreement their own party struck with Senate Democrats to end the crisis, which had passed the Senate before dawn on Friday, House Republican leaders — with President Trump’s backing — refused to take it up. They derided the Senate plan for hewing too closely to Democrats’ position by omitting money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the two agencies responsible for carrying out Mr. Trump’s deportation crackdown, which are operating under previously approved funds.
“House Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. “This gambit that was done last night is a joke.”
Mr. Johnson called the Senate-passed deal engineered by Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, “ridiculousness,” and instead teed up a stopgap measure to fund the entire department until May 22.
The House passed that measure on a 213 to 203 vote late Friday night, before leaving Washington for a scheduled two-week break.
The vote left funding for the Department of Homeland Security up in the air, with competing bills pending in each chamber — both controlled by Republicans — and neither apparently willing to approve the other’s proposal.
House Democrats had been ready to join with Republicans and back the Senate-passed measure, clearing it for Mr. Trump to sign it into law and end the shutdown. But the House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate, where Democrats have been rejecting similar proposals for more than a month. It was unclear late on Friday whether senators, who have now scattered to their states for the two-week recess, would return to Washington and vote again.
Mr. Thune did not weigh in on the backlash to the agreement he negotiated, and Mr. Johnson tried to shift the blame to Senate Democrats. But Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the senior Democrat on the Rules Committee, said the House Republican opposition left no question which party was responsible for the lapse in agency funding.
“If you woke up this morning not knowing who to blame for this shutdown, you will go to bed tonight with no doubt on who to blame,” Mr. McGovern said. “It’s House Republicans and Speaker Johnson.”
Mr. Trump, who had waffled all week about whether he would support a deal to end the shutdown, also removed any doubt about where he stood, telling Fox News in an interview that the Senate-passed bill “wasn’t appropriate.” He urged Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster, a move he has long demanded, and force through a funding measure over Democratic opposition.
Senate Democrats have insisted for weeks that they would not support new funding for the Department of Homeland Security unless the Trump administration agreed to significant restrictions on ICE tactics and officer conduct after federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.
(Source: New York Times)
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