House Takes Big Step Toward Funding Homeland Security

The House took a crucial step Wednesday toward funding the Department of Homeland Security, as the Trump administration warned that money to pay Transportation Security Administration and other agency personnel will "soon run out," sparking new threats of airport disruptions and national security concerns. House Republicans adopted a budget resolution on a largely party-line vote, 215-211, the AP reports. The action doesn't automatically fund the department—it's focused on eventually providing $70 billion for immigration enforcement and deportations for the remainder of President Trump's time in office, which Democrats oppose. But launching the GOP budget process, which will play out over weeks to come, has been what Speaker Mike Johnson needed to unlock a broader bipartisan bill for TSA agents and others that has languished during the longest-ever agency shutdown in history. That bill is expected to come to a vote Thursday to fund much of the agency.

"It takes time," Johnson said after another day of start-stop action in the chamber that dragged for hours into the evening. "We will get there." The House's narrow Republican majority has repeatedly stalled out under Johnson's gavel, with his own party tangled in internal disputes on a range of pending issues, including the Homeland Security funding. Democrats refused to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without changes to those operations after the deaths of Americans protesting Trump's deportation agenda. Republicans refused the broader Democratic-backed bill to fund TSA and the other aspects of Homeland Security without the money for ICE and Border Patrol.

But the White House urged Congress this week to act, warning the money Trump tapped to temporarily pay TSA and other workers through executive actions is drying up. In the memo late Tuesday to lawmakers, the White House called on the House to quickly approve the budget resolution that GOP senators had approved in an all-night session last week to kickstart the process. Next steps are expected Thursday when the House is likely to consider the Democratic-backed bill to fund the department, minus the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement funds, which are expected to come later this summer in the budget resolution process. (Meanwhile, TSA officers are quitting in droves.)