Congress has brought the longest-ever funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security to a close, without resolving the immigration fight that sparked it. On Thursday, Day 76 of the shutdown, the House cleared a bipartisan bill—already passed by the Senate more than a month ago—to restart money for most DHS agencies, including the Coast Guard, TSA, Secret Service, and FEMA, Politico reports.
- President Trump swiftly signed the bill, ending weeks in which thousands of employees worked without pay and more than 1,100 TSA agents quit, the AP reports. The package funds the agencies through September. The White House had urged Congress to act this week, warning that temporary funding would run out soon, potentially causing airport disruptions.
The deal pointedly excludes Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, which have been operating on earlier funding. House Republicans balked at passing the bill because of the ICE exclusion and the party eventually had to "bypass its own right flank" to push the bill through with a maneuver that limited debate and sped it to a vote, the New York Times reports. Republicans now plan to move a separate, GOP-only bill steering tens of billions to those agencies, using a budget maneuver to evade a Senate filibuster. Trump wants that package on his desk by June 1, with no new limits on enforcement tactics.
Democrats, who had pushed to withhold funding for ICE and Border Patrol unless stricter safeguards were added, largely held the line during weeks of attempts by House Republicans to push through legislation to fund all of DHS. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, proposed the bipartisan bill more than two months ago, the AP reports. "It is about damn time," she said Thursday.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
