“We don’t want a shutdown,” President Donald Trump said as he began a Cabinet meeting Thursday morning.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told The Associated Press on Thursday that he had been “vehemently opposed” to breaking up the funding package, but "if it is broken up, we will have to move it as quickly as possible. We can’t have the government shut down.”
Negotiations were ongoing Thursday afternoon, ahead of the deadline at midnight Friday. Democrats have asked for a short extension — two weeks or less — and say they are prepared to block the wide-ranging spending bill if their demands aren't met, denying Republicans the votes they need to pass it and triggering a shutdown.
Republicans were pushing for a longer extension of the Homeland Security funding, but the two sides were “getting closer,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.
Rare bipartisan talks
The rare bipartisan talks between Trump and his frequent adversary, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, came after the fatal shooting of 37 year-old Alex Pretti in Minnesota over the weekend and calls by senators in both parties for a full investigation. Schumer called it “a moment of truth.”
“The American people support law enforcement. They support border security. They do not support ICE terrorizing our streets and killing American citizens,” Schumer said.
With no final agreement yet and an uncertain path ahead, the standoff threatened to plunge the country into another shutdown, just two months after Democrats blocked a spending bill over expiring federal health care subsidies. That dispute that closed the government for 43 days as Republicans refused to negotiate.
The fall shutdown ended when a small group of moderate Democrats broke away to strike a deal with Republicans, but Democrats are more unified this time after the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents.
Democrats lay out demands
Democrats have laid out several demands, asking the White House to “end roving patrols” in cities and coordinate with local law enforcement on immigration arrests, including requiring tighter rules for warrants.
They also want an enforceable code of conduct so agents are held accountable when they violate rules. Schumer said agents should be required to have “masks off, body cameras on” and carry proper identification, as is common practice in most law enforcement agencies.
The Democratic caucus is united in those “common sense reforms” and the burden is on Republicans to accept them, Schumer said.
“Boil it all down, what we are talking about is that these lawless ICE agents should be following the same rules that your local police department does," said Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota. "There has to be accountability.”
Earlier Thursday, Tom Homan, the president's border czar, said during a press conference in Minneapolis that federal immigration officials are working on a plan to begin drawing down the number of agents in Minnesota but that it would depend on cooperation from state authorities.
Still far apart on policy
As the two sides narrowed in on a spending deal, the length of a temporary extension for Homeland Security funding emerged as a sticking point. Thune said Thursday that two weeks wasn’t enough time to negotiate a final compromise.
“We’ll see where discussions are going between (Democrats) and the White House on that,” Thune said.
Even if the two sides strike a deal, negotiations down the road on a final agreement on the Homeland Security bill are likely to be difficult.
Democrats want Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown to end. “If the Trump administration resist reforms, we shut down the agency,” said Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
“We need to take a stand,” he said.
But Republicans are unlikely to agree to all of the Democrats' demands.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said he is opposed to requiring immigration enforcement officers to show their faces, even as he blamed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for decisions that he said are “tarnishing” the agency’s reputation.
“You know, there’s a lot of vicious people out there, and they’ll take a picture of your face, and the next thing you know, your children or your wife or your husband are being threatened at home," Tillis said.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said some of the Democratic proposals “make sense,” such as better training and body cameras. Still, he said he was putting his Senate colleagues “on notice” that if Democrats try to make changes to the funding bill, he would insist on new language preventing local governments from resisting the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“I think the best legislative solution for our country would be to adopt some of these reforms to ICE and Border Patrol,” Graham posted on X, but to also end so-called “sanctuary city” policies.
Uncertainty in the House
Across the Capitol, House Republicans have said they do not want any changes to the bill they passed last week. In a letter to Trump on Tuesday, the conservative House Freedom Caucus wrote that its members stand with the Republican president and ICE.
“The package will not come back through the House without funding for the Department of Homeland Security,” they wrote.
Speaker Johnson appeared open to the changes, albeit reluctantly, and told the AP he would want to approve the bills “as quickly as possible” once the Senate acts.
“The American people will be hanging in the balance over this,” Johnson said. "A shutdown doesn’t help anybody.”
___
Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Stephen Groves, Joey Cappelletti and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.