April 1, 2026
Remember when Speaker Mike Johnson said this last week about the Senate’s Homeland Security funding bill?
Well – now he’s changed his mind.
In case you forgot the Department of Homeland Security is still shutdown and congress is still on recess. And that’s because last week the house and senate took off — after the senate unanimously passed a bill to fund all of homeland security except for ICE and customs and border protection, but the House refused. Speaker Mike Johnson said what he said.
But today — according to this joint statement from the Speaker and from Senate Majority Leader John Thune – the new plan is – the house *will* pass the “joke” bill the Senate passed last week. And homeland security will be fully funded through the rest of the fiscal year except for ICE and parts of CBP. And then in a separate reconciliation bill – the Republicans will attempt to fund ICE and customs and border protection for three years with only republican votes.
How can the republicans backpedal so hard on this after the Speaker made such an issue about it last week? Well –because the speaker has *now* come around to accept the exact same thing Senate majority leader Thune said last week. Which is — Democrats are willing to fund almost all of homeland security but they are not willing to fund ice and parts of CBP until they get real policy changes to the way ICE and CBP conduct themselves on the streets of America. Republicans aren’t willing to make any of those policy changes. So there’s a standoff. But in the meantime, the Republicans are in full control of this government and they are responsible for making sure the government is functioning and right now homeland security is not functioning. So they have to get the funding passed…even if it doesn’t include ICE and CBP yet.
The question is – can the Republicans pass a reconciliation bill and when are they going to do that? Well – it’s going depend on what’s included in that bill and it’s going to depend on when they bring this reconciliation bill to the floor of both the House and the senate. If this reconciliation bill only includes this three year of funding for ICE and CBP then yeah – I think they probably can get it done quickly and they can pass it. But if they start to throw in a bunch of other things like the SAVE America act – which they have floated in the past – then it’s unclear whether if it can pass or even if it can qualify as reconciliation.
Read the statement from Johnson and Thune here.
