Dem
47
GOP
53
We probably need to make a macro of that headline, since that has been the "news" at least two dozen times since DHS was (partially) shut down 49 days ago. But with Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announcing they are on board with the bill that passed the Senate with unanimous consent, it seemed as if the end might be upon us. Not so much, as it turns out.
As a reminder, the Senate agreed to fund all of DHS except for ICE and parts of Customs and Border Patrol. Democrats saw this as a win because it isolated the thing they (and, more importantly, their voters) care about, and allowed the airports to resume normal operation. Republicans saw this as a win because they didn't actually give up anything on ICE (as yet), ICE is funded through BBB funds for a good while, and there was talk of doing an end-run around Democrats with a reconciliation bill.
The problem is that this is enough of a win for Trump (for now), and enough of a win for Senate Republicans (for now), and enough of a win for Johnson (who really just does what Trump orders him to do), but it's not enough of a win for some meaningful number of Johnson's Republican colleagues in the House. Those colleagues (presumably mostly Freedom Caucusers) are furious that the Speaker blasted the bill as a "joke" and then turned around and embraced it as soon as Trump ordered him to. Senate Republicans are none-too-pleased either, since Johnson said some pretty insulting things about them, like "guessing" they hadn't even read the bill.
The upshot is that yesterday, Johnson announced he will not schedule a vote on the DHS bill—which, once again, passed the Senate unanimously—until the Senate makes "significant progress" on a bill to fund ICE and CBP. That, of course, means he doesn't have the votes right now, and that he's far enough away that whipping votes, even if it's with all his might, isn't going to help.
Exactly what "significant progress" means is anyone's guess. Relations between Republicans in the House and Republicans in the Senate right now are very sour, largely because House Republicans refuse to accept how the Senate works (e.g. the filibuster), and Senate Republicans don't much like their House colleagues' unwillingness to come to grips with reality (or their House colleagues' habit of going on TV to badmouth the Senate). It appears that House Republicans think that any promise from the Senate is basically useless, and that if the House moves forward first and votes on a bill because of [PROMISE A], the Senate will hamstring them and forget about [PROMISE A]. So, it sure looks like the Senate is going to actually have to pass a reconciliation bill in order to get their House colleagues to do anything with the "funding the rest of DHS" bill.
A reconciliation bill, of course, comes with the hurdles that we've already laid out many times. With very little margin for error in either chamber, it will not be easy to pull a bill together that can get near-unanimous approval from both conferences. There might be slight good news for Johnson that all of this jockeying back and forth might have convinced House Republicans that funding for ICE is all they can get, and that other goodies are not possible. But even if so, that does not solve the problem that Trump wants a bunch of SAVE goodies in there, and has said he won't sign a reconciliation bill that doesn't have them (despite the fact that they cannot survive a Byrd Bath from Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough).
The members are (largely) out of town for another week, and then once that's elapsed, it's anyone's guess how long it will take to make the sausage, or if the sausage can be made at all. The best, and probably only, hope Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) have is to persuade Trump that he's going to have to live with ICE/CBP funding, and that's it. But if he digs in, then the DHS shutdown could very well linger into summer, or even fall. (Z)