January 30, 2026
We are going to have a partial government shutdown even though the Senate just passed a massive bill to avoid it. The senate just passed the deal I’ve been talking about since last night.
Now – don’t panic this is only a partial shutdown and it’s supposed to be over very quickly. It only impacts departments like homeland security, defense, housing and urban development, health and human services, state and treasury. Those departments are affected because the bill the senate passed tonight – still needs to be passed in the house. And they’re on recess and not scheduled to come back until Monday. So those departments I mentioned will technically shut down at the 12:01 am. Saturday morning so in just a few hours. Now I say don’t panic because the US government isn’t normally open over the weekend so the impact of a partial weekend shutdown is going to be very minimal. Plus the House is expected to vote on this senate deal on Monday night. If they do that – and if they do then pass it — it will go to President Trump’s desk and the partial shutdown will be over by Monday night. We don’t yet know exactly what this means for you federal workers on Monday – I’m sure we’ll learn more over the weekend.
So let’s talk about the bill that just passed in the Senate – because that’s important and it’s headed to the House.
The massive package includes the House passed funding levels for all the departments I mentioned through the rest of the fiscal year which is the end of September. And it also includes a separate bill for homeland security funding. That bill changed in the Senate. Instead of funding DHS through the end of the fiscal year it’s only a continuing resolution that temporarily keeps homeland security open for just two more weeks at status quo funding levels and makes no operational changes to ICE.
That bill package including the DHS continuing resolution passed in the Senate with a vote of 71 to 29. Five Republicans, 23 Democrats and 1 Independent voted no.
So – once the House passes this deal – which they are expected to do – but you never know with the house – but if they do and we get past this partial short term shutdown – between then and February 13th House and Senate Democrats and Republicans are going to have to make deal on policy changes to ICE and immigration enforcement. There is absolutely no telling how that is going to end up…
See how your Senator voted here.
