Senate Democrats voted Thursday to block a motion to advance a House-passed bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, putting Washington on the brink of a partial government shutdown that will affect more than 260,000 federal employees.
The motion, which required 60 votes, failed to advance by a vote of 52-47.
Centrist Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who has a long-standing policy of voting against government shutdowns, was the only Democrat to vote for advancing the measure.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) voted no for procedural reasons to be able to bring the bill back to the floor quickly at a later date.
Shortly after, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) attempted to get unanimous consent to move a two-week stopgap bill, but Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) objected.
Democrats blocked the legislation after rejecting an offer from the White House they said didn’t go far enough to reform immigration enforcement operations after the fatal shootings of two protesters in Minneapolis last month.
As a result, funding for key agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Coast Guard will lapse Saturday without further action from Congress.
The agencies that are the main targets of Democratic fury, however, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), will be able to continue operations without much disruption.
Both agencies received tens of billions of dollars through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Trump signed into law last year.
“Democrats have been very clear. We will not support an extension of the status quo, a status quo that permits masked secret police to barge into people’s homes without warrants, no guardrails, zero oversight from independent authorities,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said before the vote.
Schumer acknowledged that White House border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that it was ending its surge deployment of ICE officers in Minnesota but declared the action falls short of what’s needed to prevent troubling incidents connected to law enforcement operations.
Hellbound and Down 