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This week, the House is in a swift push to resolve the partial government shutdown that began on Saturday.
Lawmakers are set to deliberate on an extensive funding proposal, which bundles five full-year appropriations bills with a temporary measure to maintain the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding at current levels for another two weeks. The Senate already approved this package last week.
However, securing passage remains a significant challenge.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) aimed to expedite the bill’s passage using a fast-track procedure, which would bypass a challenging procedural vote but necessitate a two-thirds majority.
Nonetheless, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) dampened those hopes by informing Johnson that Democrats would not provide the necessary votes for the fast-track approach. Consequently, Republican leaders must now rally their slim majority to push the legislation forward.
The House Rules Committee is now set to take up the measure on Monday, which means the shutdown will last through at least Tuesday.
The package passed the upper chamber after the White House and Senate Democrats struck a deal to split the DHS appropriations bill from the five other full-year funding bills and instead extend the department’s funding for a short period through a stopgap. Democrats had threatened to sink the entire “minibus” if DHS funding wasn’t removed following two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minnesota by immigration agents.
Senate Democrats are looking to negotiate reforms on the DHS appropriations bill with Republicans during the two weeks.
President Trump backed the deal in a Truth Social post, noting that the “only thing that can slow our Country down is another long and damaging Government Shutdown.”
“Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote,” he wrote in his post.
What else you can expect this week:
- Clinton contempt resolution vote: The House is planning to hold votes on contempt of Congress resolutions against former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Both Clintons refused to appear for scheduled depositions earlier this month.
- Noem impeachment talks to continue: Rep. Robin Kelly’s (D-Ill.) resolution to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for “high crimes and misdemeanors” has so far gained 162 signatures and could possibly gain more this week as the situation in Minnesota remains a flash point.
- Florida Republican moves to expel colleague: Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) said he is moving to expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) after a House Ethics Committee report last week found “substantial reason to believe” she engaged in fraud as a member of Congress.
Johnson likely to hit roadblocks on funding
Johnson faces a delicate balancing act as he works to appease conservatives in his caucus and pass the funding package in an effort to end the partial shutdown as quickly as possible.
Jeffries told Johnson over the weekend that House Democrats would not commit to providing the votes to move the funding package under a fast-track process that would require substantial Democratic support, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill.
Further adding to Johnson’s dilemma is the shrinking of his GOP majority, after Democratic Rep.-elect Christian Menefee won the Texas special election runoff to fill the late Rep. Sylvester Turner’s seat on Saturday. Once Menefee is sworn in, Johnson will hold a 218-214 majority and will only be able to lose one Republican vote on any party-line bill, assuming all members are present and Democrats are unified in opposition.
That means he must rely on his conference to almost completely unify to pass a procedural rule to advance the package in the House and secure final passage. But there are already signs of discontent within his ranks.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), for one, has called for attaching either the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, or the SAVE America Act, a new version sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), to the package.
“The only way these appropriations pass out of the house is if the SAVE [America] Act is attached to them @HouseGOP. Voter ID and Secure elections is a MUST,” she wrote on the social platform X.
Luna hasn’t specified how many Republicans are behind her effort, but she told Fox News last week “it’s definitely a number that’s big enough to completely halt all floor proceedings.”
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus and House Rules Committee, expressed frustration with a two-week DHS stopgap measure.
“The House did their job by getting the remaining six bills over to the Senate. We approved it. My question with stripping it [the DHS bill] out — what’s going to change? I mean, what’s new that is there to debate?” Norman told The Hill last week.
He added that all Democrats “want to do is grandstand on how bad ICE is and how bad Kristi Noem is. I completely reject that. And why would we give them two weeks to negotiate? I mean, what is there to negotiate? … I’m fed up with the Senate not having the backbone to stand up and say, ‘Look, we’re not going to play ping-pong, this back and forth.”
And Steube wrote on X that “leadership is asking Members to support a package filled with Democrat earmarks, refugee resettlement funding, and foreign aid, and then pair it with funding for our Border Patrol, ICE agents, and Coast Guard.”
“I will not support that approach. Our law enforcement and border security professionals deserve clean and responsible funding. And conservatives deserve real leadership in Congress that doesn’t cater to Democrats at the expense of our principles,” he wrote.
The House Rules Committee will take up the package on Monday. Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday” that the House will “get this done by Tuesday, I’m convinced.”
House to gear up for Clinton contempt resolution vote
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last month advanced resolutions to hold former President Clinton and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress. The two had refused to show up for in-person depositions with the committee concerning their personal relationships with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The House Rules Committee is set to take up the resolutions on Monday, and Politico reported that GOP leaders plan to hold floor votes on Wednesday.
The Clintons previously argued in a joint letter that the subpoenas were legally invalid, and that the decisions Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has made regarding the Epstein investigation have “prevented progress in discovering the facts about the government’s role.”
Comer, in response, said the subpoenas issued to the Clintons were not “suggestions.”
“As Ranking Member [Robert] Garcia has stated, ‘defying a congressional subpoena is highly illegal’ and ‘no one is above the law,’” Comer said.
Nine Democrats on the House Oversight Committee ended up voting in favor of the Bill Clinton resolution, while three voted for the Hillary Clinton measure.
Comer said he expects the resolutions to pass the House. Jeffries, meanwhile, had said he opposes both resolutions.
Noem impeachment resolution expected to gain more signatures this week
Noem has been under fire from both sides following two fatal shootings by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. House Democrats have been calling on her to resign, and Jeffries said last week that Democrats are ready to launch impeachment proceedings against Noem if Trump doesn’t remove her from power “immediately.”
“She should have never been confirmed,” he said. “Shame on every Republican in the Senate who put this wildly unqualified person into a position of significance at the Department of Homeland Security so she could unleash brutalization on everyday Americans, American citizens and law-abiding immigrant families.”
Trump, however, has defended Noem, saying he believes she is doing a “very good job.”
As of last Thursday, Kelly’s resolution to impeach Noem has garnered 179 Democratic co-sponsors. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) is one of the Democrats who signed on. It will likely gain more signatures this week, as the controversy over Trump’s immigration crackdown remains in the spotlight.
Jeffries has also declared that Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and a leading proponent of the administration’s deportation agenda, should also be removed.
House Republican moves to expel colleague
Steube wrote on X that he plans to call up a resolution to expel Cherfilus-McCormick when House lawmakers return to Washington.
The move from Steube comes after a report from the House Ethics Committee’s investigative subcommittee found she had violated several laws, regulations and standards of conduct. The subcommittee wrote that it is “bringing the charges” against Cherfilus-McCormick related to campaign finance laws and regulations, criminal laws implicated by campaign finance misconduct, the Ethics in Government Act, the Code of Ethics for Government Service and certain House rules.
Cherfilus-McCormick was indicted in November by a grand jury. She is accused of stealing $5 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds and using some of it to fund her campaign.
She defended herself against the latest House Ethics Committee report, insisting she rejects the allegations and remains “confident the full facts will make clear I did nothing wrong.”
Expelling a member of Congress requires a two-thirds majority, meaning a number of Democrats would need to back Steube’s resolution.
But Jeffries told reporters last week that the congresswoman is “of course entitled to the presumption of innocence.”
“She’s going through the process right now, and any effort to expel her lacks any basis at this moment, in law, fact, or the Constitution,” he said. “And if in fact there’s a resolution that is brought to the floor to try to expel the congresswoman, it’s going to fail.”
Mike Lillis and Emily Brooks contributed.