Senate leaders have a bipartisan funding deal in hand but it remains to be seen whether they will avert a costly government shutdown as the clock ticks down toward Friday’s midnight deadline.

Lawmakers left Capitol Hill late Thursday after all rank-and-file senators could not come to agreement to swiftly move the spending package – the contours of which negotiators from both parties and the White House struck earlier in the day. Senators are set to return Friday with an eye toward sending the bills back to the House for final approval, but negotiations can change rapidly.

“I hope we can get these issues resolved. Right now, we got snags on both sides, but tomorrow’s another day,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters as he left the US Capitol.

Any one senator can object to quick consideration of a measure on the floor, slowing down the process.

The deal, announced by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hours before, includes a two-week stopgap funding extension for the Department of Homeland Security that Democrats had requested. It also separates the DHS bill from a package of bipartisan spending bills to fund critical agencies through September, including the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.

If the Senate is successful Friday, however, final passage could still be delayed until Monday – past the official shutdown deadline – as the House would have to return to Washington from its week-long recess. Speaker Mike Johnson, so far, has been non-committal on when exactly that might be but swift approval by his chamber could blunt impacts of any lapse in funding to the federal workforce.

Negotiations appeared to stall late Thursday evening, but the pace at which they had moved in recent days underscored the White House’s desire to avoid another prolonged federal funding fight. It also stood as a tacit acknowledgement of the political risks of ignoring the public outcry over ICE’s harsh tactics.

GOP leaders ultimately moved toward Democrats’ demands, stripping the DHS bill from the larger funding package and instead temporarily funding the department while the two parties debate broader reforms to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, two of the sources said.

The two-week extension to DHS funding is the time frame that Senate Democrats had been pushing for and shorter than what the White House had initially offered. Still, President Donald Trump urged lawmakers to back the deal.

“Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come together to get the vast majority of the Government funded until September, while at the same time providing an extension to the Department of Homeland Security (including the very important Coast Guard, which we are expanding and rebuilding like never before),” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the deal was announced. “Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote.”

Not all were easily convinced.

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters that he was one of the senators blocking the package, calling it a “bad deal.” The South Carolina Republican objected to a renegotiation of the DHS funding bill, arguing that ICE agents were being “demonized” and calling the way they’ve been treated “unconscionable.”

Graham was not the only Republican with concerns, Thune said.

Schumer would not say anything about Democratic holds, but chastised Graham and Republicans, saying, “They need to get their act together.”

Eleventh-hour talks

Capitol Hill leaders and the White House were in talks throughout the day on how to move forward on spending, seeking to avoid a partial federal funding lapse at the week’s end.

While an initial vote to advance a House-passed, six-bill funding package failed earlier in the day, hours later negotiations were down to a final sticking point on how long to temporarily extend funding for DHS after stripping it from the broader package.

Democrats, keen to seize on widespread discontent after the deadly shootings of two US citizens in Minneapolis this month, said they would not support a short-term funding extension for DHS that lasts more than two weeks. The Trump administration, meanwhile, pushed for six.

“More people can get killed in two weeks,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, however, argued Congress would need at least two weeks procedurally to renegotiate, consider and pass a new DHS funding bill.

“It’s too short. We can’t do it in two weeks,” the Oklahoma Republican told reporters.

“By the time you go through the amendments, you go through cloture, you go through all that, it’s probably not enough. We asked for six – I mean, we may settle at three, we may settle at five, we may settle at six, I don’t know. But two, if that’s what they’re insisting — OK, maybe. But they got to be realistic on the time frame,” Mullin said.

Seven conservatives had joined all Democrats to block the broader funding package from moving forward. But Thune expressed confidence that lawmakers would back a final deal with “a good, strong vote on both sides.”

The push in the Senate Thursday came after Schumer had laid out his caucus’ demands the day before. The changes to ICE tactics and protocols that the party wants to see included in any funding bill for DHS are: tightening the use of warrants and end roving patrols, enforcing a code of conduct comparable to force policies for state and local law enforcement, and for ICE agents to remove their masks and wear body cameras.

However, even if DHS were to go unfunded, ICE will remain operational through funding that stems from Trump’s domestic policy package that was passed last summer. (CNN)

Update news