To End Shutdown, Trump Seeks to Muscle Funding Deal Through a Fractured House

President Donald Trump on Monday urged House lawmakers to end the partial government shutdown that began over the weekend, as Speaker Mike Johnson faces razor-thin margins and mounting resistance on a critical funding bill from both progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was “working hard with Speaker Johnson” to send legislation the Senate had already passed to his desk, where he promised to sign it immediately. “There can be NO CHANGES at this time,” he wrote, warning that another prolonged shutdown would be “pointless, and destructive.” He called on lawmakers in both parties to vote yes and reopen the government “WITHOUT DELAY.”

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The plea underscored the precarious position Johnson finds himself in as the House returned from a weeklong recess. The Senate passed the bipartisan package on Friday evening, but funding for several major agencies lapsed early Saturday morning when the House failed to act, triggering a partial shutdown that has furloughed workers and forced others to work without pay. A final vote in the House is not expected before Tuesday at the earliest as Johnson must first move the legislation through the chamber’s normal procedural process, which includes a rule vote that Democrats are unlikely to support.

The Trump Administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement has become the central flash point in the funding dispute. The Senate bill would fund five federal agencies for the remainder of the fiscal year and extend funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, for two weeks, a stopgap intended to give the White House and congressional Democrats time to negotiate possible changes to federal immigration enforcement practices. But the compromise, struck largely between Senate Democrats and the Trump Administration last week, has drawn sharp objections from House lawmakers in both parties who were not part of the talks.

Several conservative Republicans have criticized the Senate bill as a capitulation to Democrats and have floated demands to attach unrelated legislation. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida said she would not support the package unless it was linked to legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, known as the SAVE Act, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said would be dead-on-arrival in the upper chamber. Other conservatives have pushed for ending so-called sanctuary cities, or have objected to what they describe as excessive spending and earmarks.

At the same time, progressive Democrats have said they are unwilling to help Republicans pass any funding bill that provides money to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even temporarily. Their opposition has centered on recent aggressive enforcement actions and the fatal shooting of two civilians by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, which have sparked protests and calls for sweeping reforms.

House Democratic leaders have demanded changes including higher legal thresholds for searches and arrests, mandatory use of body cameras by ICE agents, bans on agents wearing masks during operations, and tighter limits on warrantless operations. Some lawmakers went further, calling for ICE to be denied funding altogether or dismantled entirely.

“I just in good conscience cannot vote to give more money to ICE agents as they’re violating our constitutional rights,” Rep. Ro Khanna of California said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

The standoff has complicated the legislative path forward. Even if a handful of Democrats ultimately back the funding bill, Johnson must first pass a procedural rule to bring it to the floor—a step that typically requires near-unanimous support from the majority party. On Monday evening, Johnson is set to swear in Christian Menefee, a Democrat who just won a special election in Texas, reducing the Republican majority to 218–214 and giving individual lawmakers even greater leverage. Following the swearing-in, he can afford at most one Republican defection if all members are present.

Over the last year, Johnson has repeatedly turned to Trump to help shepherd difficult bills through the House. Asked over the weekend whether he expected Trump to help pressure holdouts, Johnson said he was confident the President would “get on the phone with them” and rally support for what he called the White House’s “play call,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Democrats said they were being asked to trust an Administration that had offered few concrete commitments. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told colleagues that while the Senate deal was “a step in the right direction,” House Democrats had not been part of the negotiations and would not help fast-track the bill, forcing Republicans to move it through the standard procedural process.

“It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Democrats are going to provide Republicans [the votes]” to advance the bill, Jeffries told reporters Monday. The two-week extension in funding for Homeland Security was designed to jump-start talks on reining in immigration enforcement practices, but Jeffries accused the Administration of moving too slowly and questioned whether meaningful changes would materialize. “I still haven’t seen an ironclad path articulated by the Trump Administration, related to the type of dramatic changes that are necessary in order to rein in ICE,” he said.

While Trump said he would “work together in good faith to address the issues that have been raised,” he has sent mixed signals on what changes he might ultimately accept. He recently moved to scale back aspects of the enforcement campaign and replaced the leader of the Minneapolis operation with his border czar Tom Homan after deadly encounters with civilians in the city. And on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the Administration was preparing to deploy body cameras for “every officer in the field in Minneapolis,” with plans to expand that to “DHS law enforcement across the country” as “funding is available.”

But over the weekend, Trump also delivered a forceful defense of ICE and warned protesters against confronting federal agents.

Johnson has dismissed some of the Democrats’ demands, such as requiring judicial warrants for apprehensions or a ban on ICE agents wearing masks. “Some of these conditions and requests that they’ve made are obviously reasonable and should happen,” Johnson said on Meet the Press. “But others are going to require a lot more negotiation.”

“They’re doxing the agents of ICE,” he added. “And so when you’re talking about masking, the reason that ICE agents wear masks is to protect their own identities and protect their own families. And in some circumstances, they’ve had a price put on their heads effectively by local officials. And that’s what’s created the dangerous conditions.”

Whether Trump’s public intervention will be enough to carry the bill across the finish line remains an open question. With conservatives demanding concessions, Democrats digging in over immigration enforcement, and virtually no margin for error, Johnson must again test how far presidential pressure can go in a House divided almost evenly down the middle.