The majority of the federal government will shut down at midnight after the Senate insisted on amending a House-passed spending bil painstakingly negotiated over months with Democrats.
The spending bill, which passed the Senate on a 71-29 vote, funds around two-thirds of the federal government, including the U.S. Departments of War, Treasury, State, Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Education.
Yet by amending the bill the House sent to the Senate to remove a long-term bill funding the Department of Homeland Security, the House must return to Washington to attempt to pass the Senate-amended version – far from a sure thing.
With the House out of town, the agencies left unfunded by Congress will shut down after midnight, although congressional leaders and the White House hope the shutdown could end as soon as Monday when the House returns to Washington.
That timeline and outcome could be optimistic.
The six-bill package as passed by the House and sent to the Senate January 22 included a Department of Homeland Security funding bill, including funding for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That DHS bill passed the House with Democrat support by a 220-207 vote. But after the January 23 shooting by law enforcement of Alex Pretti, an armed activist obstructing law enforcement operations in Minneapolis, Senate Democrats reversed on their earlier pledge to avoid another shutdown. (The shutdown they triggered October 30 2025 lasted 43 days, the longest in history.)
The bill passed by the Senate, supported by a White House eager to avoid a longer-term shutdown, includes a two-week continuing resolution (CR) for DHS spending, setting up an intense fight on a longer-term DHS bill when – or if – the House passes the Senate’s funding bill.
“It is appalling that Democrats would force federal agencies to shut down and jeopardize winter storm recovery resources from FEMA because of their political vendetta against DHS and ICE for enforcing the rule of law,” Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who voted for the bill, said after the vote. “Democrats chose to put critical aid at risk for families in need of assistance because they are upset President Trump is keeping his promise to remove rapists, pedophiles, murderers, drug traffickers, and other heinous criminals from our country,” she added.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) now faces the unenviable task of having to once again negotiate with various factions on both sides of the aisle to force through a complicated funding bill.
Johnson plans to pass the bill under suspension of the rules, which requires two-thirds support of the House but allows him to skip a rule vote to bring the bill to the floor. By custom, rule votes rarely – with Johnson’s tenure as Speaker during the Biden administration the exception – receive support from the minority party. At least a handful, possibly many more, of conservatives will refuse to vote for a rule on a package that lays the groundwork for a future deal with Democrats to strip ICE and other agencies of funding and autonomy to enforce the law.
Many Republicans argue that Republican appropriators already made numerous concessions to Democrats unnecessarily in the previous agreement passed by the House – an agreement Democrats now reject to make further demands.
But Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has indicated the House Democrats are not beholden to the deal Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and the White House struck. It makes for complicated math for Johnson.
If the House is able to pass the Senate-amended funding package, the negotiations on a DHS spending bill to last through the fiscal year could be complicated. Democrats want to strip ICE of much of its enforcement authority and prohibit them from wearing face coverings, despite Democrat activists doxxing law enforcement in what some Republicans have characterized as a “kill list.”
In exchange for inevitable concessions to Democrat demands, many Republicans are insisting Democrats must swallow Republican requests. Those suggestions include election integrity legislation or prohibitions against sanctuary cities.
Three of the twelve annual appropriations bills were included in the shutdown-ending CR late last year, and Congress passed three additional bills earlier in January. Yet the six remaining bills include around two-thirds of the federal government’s discretionary spending.
Bradley Jaye is Deputy Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.
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