At Trump’s Prompting, GOP Leadership Hatches New Plan to Fund DHS

With the partial government shutdown now the longest in U.S. history, House and Senate Republicans are trying a new plan to resolve the standstill.

Last Friday, Republican senators passed a bill in the middle of the night to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, excluding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Democrats refused to fund those two agencies without additional restrictions on immigration enforcement.

The new plan would involve the House passing the Senate’s plan. Then both chambers would use the reconciliation process to fund immigration enforcement and border security for three years, without needing Democrat support.

On Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump called on Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La, to pass a funding bill “NO LATER than June 1st.” Trump has threatened to recall members of Congress from their Easter recess to pass a bill funding the department.

The president explained in a Truth Social post that funding from the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” will be used for now to pay ICE and Border Patrol agents “ON TIME, and IN FULL.”

Thune and Johnson released a joint statement on Wednesday, laying out the new funding process.

“In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House will be following through on the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process,” the statement reads.

“In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited.”

Republican senators told The Daily Signal they are working with Trump.

“I absolutely agree with President Trump that Congress should reconvene and ensure that the Department of Homeland Security is fully funded, the SAVE America Act is passed, and Democrat obstruction is finally defeated,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, shared before Trump posted his statement.

“We can’t forget how we arrived at this problem: Senate Democrats blocked a bipartisan proposal passed by the House of Representatives and have continued to move the mark and changed the rules while Republicans negotiate in good faith,” a spokesperson for Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, told The Daily Signal.

Members have discussed using the process of reconciliation to pass funding for the department, requiring only a simple majority support.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, involved in Senate Republicans’ partial funding plan, has been vocal on X about the need to fund the department.

“Phenomenal leadership by President Trump,” Moreno said on X in response to Trump’s statement. He stressed the move to “fund ALL of DHS.”

Trump has called for an end to the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, a point he reiterated in Wednesday’s Truth Social post.

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