By last Friday it seemed like federal lawmakers would have no trouble meeting the January 30 deadline to approve the remaining fiscal year (FY) 2026 spending bills on their docket and avoid another (partial) government shutdown. (Legislators need to pass appropriations legislation by that deadline or several agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Departments of Defense, Education, and Health and Human Services, will be forced to shut down all nonessential operations.)
The only thing that seemed to be standing in their way was a snowstorm that threatened to delay U.S. senators’ arrival back in Washington, D.C. to vote on the package of spending bills and send them to President Donald Trump for his signature.
But the shooting by federal immigration agents of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis has dramatically complicated the path forward for Capitol Hill on government funding.
How are the two events connected — and is the country really facing yet another government shutdown? Let’s take a look.
Last Week: Republicans And Democrats Strike Bipartisan Spending Deal
As readers may recall, to end last fall’s federal government shutdown – the longest in U.S. history – members of the House and Senate approved legislation that:
- Provided funding for a handful of federal agencies and functions, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and military construction, through the end of FY 2026, which ends September 30, 2026.
- Provided funding for all other federal agencies and functions — indeed, most of them — through January 30, 2026. That short-term legislation also authorized the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which reimburses businesses and homeowners when they face damage from hurricanes or other water-related catastrophic events, to operate through January 30.
Lawmakers worked throughout January to devise a plan to avoid a partial government shutdown and extend the NFIP authorization past the end of this month.
At the beginning of last week, Republicans and Democrats announced a bipartisan agreement to keep the government open for the remainder of the fiscal year. As Politico reported, the compromise called for boosting defense funding to more than $839 billion, and funding the departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Transportation, Education, Homeland Security, and more.
Importantly, as part of the agreement, Democrats won new funding restrictions on the Trump administration’s immigration efforts. According to Politico, the compromise would keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funded at its current $10 billion level while reducing the agency’s budget for enforcement and removal efforts. The compromise legislation would mandate that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “use $20 million to outfit immigration enforcement agents with body cameras, direct the department to give officers more training on diffusing conflict while interacting with the public and provide $20 million for independent oversight of DHS detention facilities.”
Some Democrats believed the restrictions on DHS and ICE did not go far enough, so GOP House leaders allowed two separate votes last week: one on DHS funding, and one on everything else. The full U.S. House approved a standalone DHS funding bill on a slightly bipartisan, 220-207 vote. Seven Democrats voted for that legislation. The chamber approved the bill that covered Defense, Transportation, HUD, HHS, Labor, Education, and other related agencies by an overwhelmingly bipartisan 341-88 margin.
As The Hill explained, House leaders then used a procedural tactic to combine all of the remaining spending bills into one package and sent it to the Senate. Senators were in recess last week and planned to return this week to approve the massive appropriations bill through a single vote — as long as an impending snowstorm that threatened to dump several inches of snow and ice on the Washington, D.C.-area didn’t keep senators from getting back to Capitol Hill.
The storm came, but developments in Minneapolis ultimately emerged as the most significant threat to government funding.
Capitol Hill Reacts To Latest Shooting In Minneapolis
On Saturday morning, U.S. immigration officials shot and killed a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis who was protesting federal agents’ presence and removal operations in that city. In response, all of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate have said they will not support the House-passed funding package, which, as noted above, was combined to include funding for everything from DHS to the U.S. Department of Education.
As of this morning, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is standing by his demand that Republicans separate the DHS bill from the broader funding package. Minority Leader Schumer has pledged that members of his party would work with urgency to approve non-DHS funding so that those agencies do not have to shut down after January 30.
But he has said Democrats will not budge on DHS funding until the Trump administration makes further adjustments to its immigration policies. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Senate’s Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, outlined those demands yesterday. According to Roll Call, these include requiring warrants for arrests, ensuring federal agents wear identification and body cameras, launching an independent investigation into the two deadly shootings that have taken place in Minnesota in recent weeks, removing immigration officials from U.S. cities, and preventing DHS from entering “sensitive locations” such as schools and places of worship.
So far, Senate Republicans aren’t interested in acquiescing to Democrats’ insistence on splitting up the funding package.
As The Hill reported, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), who chairs of the Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee, both said Tuesday that they want to keep DHS within the broader spending legislation.
“I still think if there are things the Democrats want in the Homeland bill or addressed in the context of the situation, that they ought to make those clear and known and see to what degree the administration may be able to address them,” Majority Leader Thune said. “I would prefer that there be a way that we keep the package together.”
Many rank-and-file Republicans also are standing firm. The Hill reported that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) announced on social media that he will “oppose any effort to defund DHS. Every Republican should.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) took to X to demand that DHS “needs to continue to be fully funded.”
One reason leadership is reticent to extract DHS from the broader package? If they do so, House lawmakers would have to re-approve the legislation — and they are in recess this week with no plans to return before January 30. It’s also unclear whether House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could cobble together the votes to approve the spending legislation without DHS funding included. “It’s always a risky proposition if you have to send it back to the House,” Sen. Thune said yesterday.
Still, Democrats appear unwilling to compromise. And growing public sentiment appears to be on their side. If GOP leaders refuse to separate DHS from the rest of the legislation, is there anything they can do?
Perhaps.
How Democrats Could Excise DHS Spending
As outrage erupted amongst Democratic lawmakers over the weekend, Punchbowl explained one option that Democrats have is to demand separate votes on whether to retain each individual section of the broad spending bill. Democrats would need all 47 members of their caucus to successfully remove any portion, and, in order to reach a majority in the U.S. Senate, the support of four Republicans.
One ally Democrats may have? Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine).
Over the weekend, Chairwoman Collins told The New York Times she is ”exploring all options” to avoid a stalemate. “We have five other bills that are really vital, and I’m relatively confident they would pass,” she said. The chairwoman is among the Republicans who have expressed concerns about the Trump administration’s immigration policies and presence in U.S. cities.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) also may be another ally to Democrats. “My support for funding ICE remains the same,” Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., wrote in a statement cited by National Public Radio. “But we must also maintain our core values as a nation, including the right to protest and assemble.” (Sen. Ricketts’ statement echoes groups like the National Rifle Association, which have criticized the Trump administration’s reaction to the shooting since those remarks questioned not only the victim’s right to protest, but his right to lawfully carry a firearm.)
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is a third Republican who may be convinced to side with Democrats. “We’re at a situation where this just isn’t safe,” Sen. Hawley has said. “It’s not safe for anybody. It’s not safe for bystanders. It’s not safe for law enforcement.”
While these statements have boosted Democrats’ hopes of excising the DHS spending measure from the broader bill, it also appears the party could lose one of their own. As The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) has spoken out against ICE’s operation in Minneapolis and called on President Donald Trump to fire DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, but he also said yesterday that he “will never vote to shut our government down, especially our Defense Department.” He also argued allowing a partial shutdown would not defund ICE.
There may be one other option to avoid a shutdown: according to Punchbowl, GOP lawmakers are exploring whether the Trump administration can unilaterally make adjustments to its immigration policies in a way that would satisfy Democrats’ demands without requiring lawmakers to rewrite the spending bill. But, as of this morning, Democratic congressional leadership doesn’t appear to be willing to accept anything short of changes to statute.
In the meantime, Majority Leader Thune has filed cloture on the motion to proceed to a vote on the broader funding bill. This step means the upper chamber of Congress has to act within a certain period of time. Indeed, senators will need to vote on cloture tomorrow. If two-thirds of the chamber, 60 senators, don’t vote “yes,” it’s back to the negotiating table
Meaning: the chances of a partial shutdown after midnight on Friday remain sky high.