Perhaps more than lengthy airport security lines or thousands of unpaid employees, the key to ending the five-week Department of Homeland Security shutdown may turn out to be President Donald Trump’s inconsistency.
On Monday morning, the SAVE America Act — a bill to require proof of citizenship to register to vote — was the most important issue in the Senate, Trump wrote on Truth Social. He urged senators to attach a DHS funding measure to the elections bill, and reaffirmed a vow that he wouldn’t sign any legislation before the SAVE America Act.
By Monday evening, senators said Trump had endorsed a plan to end the shutdown, seeking to pass a bill to fund almost all of DHS, with the exception of key parts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The SAVE America Act would have to wait.
Democrats now stand to get a deal similar to what they have been demanding for weeks: funding for agencies they support — like the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency — while withholding money for ICE. They saw Trump’s all-caps ultimatum as an easy bluff to call, though they weren’t exactly celebrating quite yet.
“I’m just going to wait for the next tweet,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told reporters late Monday, ahead of Trump’s reversal.
Throughout the negotiations, Democrats — and many Republicans — never took seriously the president’s threat not to sign any bills before the SAVE America Act. As Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said Monday, “He’s not talking seriously.”
But Trump’s reversal, effectively embracing a compromise that leans heavily toward Democratic demands, underscores a central dynamic of the standoff: negotiating with a president whose positions can change within hours.
For Republicans, that volatility has created an uncomfortable bind, with the risk of another reversal hanging over any tentative agreement to reopen DHS.
Supporters of the SAVE America Act wanted to be seen fighting endlessly for its passage, despite knowing they had no chance of succeeding, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters Tuesday.
“It’s disingenuous to go out to the people and say, ‘I’m fighting for you,’ when you haven’t even entered the ring,” Tillis said.
Tillis, who supports voter ID measures, said the SAVE America Act “is not ready for prime time,” particularly because of its restrictions on mail-in balloting. Republicans should acknowledge the measure never had a shot, he said.
“Anytime you promise something you can’t possibly deliver, you’ve got to have to be held accountable,” Tillis said. “To be honest with you, there was no path for the SAVE Act in its current form.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., acknowledged that Trump’s demand for a combined SAVE America Act and DHS funding measure wasn’t in the cards.
“The idea that we would have to guarantee its passage, I think you all know that’s not realistic,” Thune told reporters Monday.
The signal that Trump could drop his demands on the SAVE America Act is a relief for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who opposes the bill. She said the president shouldn’t put up barriers to ending a shutdown.
“We here in the Senate need to do our job, and I think our job entails opening up the full DHS,” Murkowski told reporters Monday. “Let us do our job.” Trump’s reversal still doesn’t give Republicans much clarity, though it offers a glimpse of a possible DHS deal. The president still hasn’t directly communicated his support for the fledgling funding plan. Instead, most senators learned of Trump’s position through a few Republican senators who met with White House officials late Monday and relayed the president’s approval to colleagues on the Senate floor during votes. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said the new plan to fund DHS would involve an initial bipartisan bill for much of the department, followed by a Republican-only bill, passed through the budget reconciliation process, for portions of ICE. Kennedy warned, however, that the plan is far from a sure thing. “This is based on my conversation with Sen. Thune, who I trust completely, but until the president declares publicly that he’s for it, I don’t think it’s a done deal,” Kennedy told reporters Tuesday. There’s still no clear decision on how much DHS funding would be left to rely on a Republican reconciliation bill. ICE funds for enforcement and removal operations would likely be left out of a bipartisan deal, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told reporters late Monday. But there’s still a question about whether Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection will be left unfunded or given money in exchange for policy concessions, he said. The idea of relying on a reconciliation bill for ICE isn’t popular with all Republicans. On one hand, ICE has already gotten a $75 billion pot of money — roughly seven times its normal annual budget — through last year’s reconciliation bill, but on the other, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said that auxiliary fund can’t be relied upon for regular agency operations. “Reconciliation bills are not for normal funding,” Scott noted Tuesday. The new plan, while offering a path forward for DHS funding, also relies on a logistically challenging pitch of trying to pass portions of the SAVE America Act through the budget reconciliation process, which requires that the bill be primarily focused on budget issues. The current bill’s regulatory mandates — specifically requiring proof of citizenship to register and forcing states to adopt voter ID requirements at polling places — may have to be turned into financial incentives rather than direct rules. The fate of the bill would turn on the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling as to whether Republicans may find a suitable workaround under the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which set the rules for reconciliation bills. While unpredictable, it’s worth a shot, Kennedy argued. “I have seen things in the 10 years I’ve been here pass muster under the Budget Control Act, with the parliamentarian, that I didn’t think had a hope in hell,” Kennedy told reporters Tuesday. “And I’ve seen things that I thought were slam dunks get turned down. So you never know until you try.”
Jack Fitzpatrick covers Congress for MS NOW. He previously reported for Bloomberg Government, Morning Consult and National Journal. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from Arizona State University.
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
