Thune steamrolls Dems' DHS revolt as Fetterman defects, Schumer under pressure

Senate Republicans are moving ahead with a behemoth funding package in their bid to keep the government open and hope to blast through Democratic opposition in the process. 

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, on Monday teed up the first procedural step for the six-bill funding package, which includes the politically divisive Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending bill, despite warnings from Senate Democrats that they would block the legislation. 

Monday’s action is just the first of several hurdles lawmakers will have to overcome, but important nonetheless given the extreme weather that rocked much of the country and threatened to delay the process altogether. 

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s, R-S.D., gamble comes as a Friday deadline to fund the government is bearing down on the Senate. Passing the package and sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk would fully fund the government until September, when lawmakers will again need to have passed a dozen spending bills to keep the lights on.

But the immediate fight and one that threatens to derail the GOP’s plan to avert yet another shutdown is over DHS funding. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus have come out en masse against the broader package, including the Homeland funding bill, following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis on Saturday. 

Schumer and Senate Democrats rapidly mobilized their opposition to the funding bill, despite maintaining a fragile truce with the GOP in their bipartisan government funding negotiations over the last two days.

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Despite shoring up a largely unified front, including several moderate Senate Democrats who crossed the aisle to help Republicans reopen the government last year, Schumer does have one perennial defector.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has consistently opposed any attempt to shut down the government. He notably joined Senate Republicans over a dozen times last year to reopen the government as his colleagues resisted. 

And like those times before, Fetterman is not keen on shutting the federal government down, despite agreeing with Senate Democrats that the DHS bill should be stripped from the broader package. 

He noted in a statement that even shutting down the government would affect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding, given that the GOP’s colossal, "one big, beautiful" bill injected over $170 billion over the next several years into DHS.

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"I reject the calls to defund or abolish ICE. I strongly disagree with many strategies and practices ICE deployed in Minneapolis, and believe that must change," Fetterman said. "I want a conversation on the DHS appropriations bill and support stripping it from the minibus."

Fetterman and his colleagues want the DHS bill stripped from the broader package and say that they would support those remaining five bills. But doing that would open up a procedural nightmare in the process and likely lead to a partial government shutdown, given that the House would have to return from a week-long break to weigh in. 

And like the last foray into a possible shutdown, Schumer argued that the onus was on Thune and Senate Republicans, despite Senate Democrats having negotiated the current funding package on a bipartisan basis. 

"The responsibility to prevent a partial government shutdown is on Leader Thune and Senate Republicans," Schumer said in a statement. "If Leader Thune puts those five bills on the floor this week, we can pass them right away. If not, Republicans will again be responsible for another government shutdown."