The Senate voted Friday evening to pass the federal budget, defunding all but one entity: the Department of Homeland Security, which was given a two-week funding extension to negotiate new guardrails around Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If no agreement is reached, DHS funding would end and the department would face closure.
The compromise — the result of frenzied negotiations between the joint Senate Democrat caucus, their Republican counterparts and the White House — passed 71-29. However, DHS will remain unfunded over the weekend until the House of Representatives reconvenes on Monday to approve the new stopgap bill.
This is certainly a surprising reversal for the DHS funding bill, which was expected to pass the Senate with a handful of Democrat votes, despite vocal opposition to continued funding of ICE. But after Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents during a protest in Minneapolis, Senate Democrats unanimously announced they would not vote to continue funding DHS without significant reforms to ICE, forcing the Trump administration to negotiate on keeping the government open. (This would be the second government shutdown in less than a year.)
Although the Democratic caucus often fractured, the political circumstances were in their favor. A poll conducted by the Democrat-aligned Senate Majority PAC found that a solid majority of voters were in favor of Democrats forcing a partial shutdown over ICE reforms, and would blame Republicans if the government shutdown remains.
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