Lawmakers struggle to make headway on Homeland Security funding

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers appear far from ending a funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security even as the president’s nominee to run the department, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, pleaded with colleagues Wednesday to resolve the impasse.

Democrats, for more than a month, have been refusing to fund certain agencies within the department, saying there must be accountability after the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis. Two key enforcement agencies, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, are part of Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, Transportation and Security Administration officials warned that delays at some airports could get worse as more screeners working without pay call out or, in some cases, quit.

The DHS shutdown entered Day 33 on Wednesday.

Democrats turn again to the discharge petition

House Democrats are signing a petition that would force the House to take up a bill from Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., to fund the TSA and other DHS agencies. But the bill would not fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the office of the secretary.

Most such petition efforts are unsuccessful, but Democrats recently used a discharge petition to force a vote on requiring the Department of Justice to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Once a vote was triggered, resistance in Congress to releasing the files crumbled.

Now, Democrats say they want to use the same tool to pass DeLauro’s bill.

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“Discharge petitions are difficult, some say impossible,” Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said as Democrats gathered on the Capitol steps. “But for us, difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week.”

Republicans said that Homeland Security needs to be fully operational during a heightened level of security and that Democrats can’t fund it using a piecemeal approach.

“It was created in the wake of 9/11. Democrats are acting like it’s September 10th, before 9/11 happened,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.

If all of the Democrats in the House sign the petition, then they would need just four Republicans to sign on to force a vote. But even if that were to occur and DeLauro’s bill managed to pass the House, it would face an uphill climb in the Senate, where support from 60 senators is needed to advance any spending measure.

Trading offers but little movement

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead DHS, in his testimony, praised the more than 100,000 DHS employees working without pay as he urged colleagues to fund the department.

“We have to realize that we’re putting our homeland and the peace of mind at risk for the American people,” Mullin told the panel considering his nomination.

Behind the scenes, Democrats sent the White House their latest offer for a funding bill, which Republicans said was essentially unchanged from what they submitted nearly three weeks ago.

Meanwhile, the administration highlighted in a letter to Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Katie Britt of Alabama what changes to immigration enforcement that it has already agreed to, including:

— Expanded use of body-worn cameras, with an exception for undercover operations.

— Limited civil enforcement activities at certain sensitive locations, subject to a narrow exception for immediate needs like national security. Sensitive locations include places like hospitals and schools.

— Increased oversight through the creation of mandatory reviews and compliance reporting from the inspector general for DHS.

— Officer identification will be clearly displayed for personnel carrying out immigration enforcement activities. Moreover, officers will have to clearly verbalize their agency and identification upon request when engaging in official duties. Undercover officers would not be subject to these requirements.

But Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that the White House isn’t going far enough.

“The White House is still refusing to engage on some of the most pressing demands Democrats have called for since day one,” Schumer said.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., offered a bill on the Senate floor to fund the Transportation Security Administration through September. But Republicans objected to its passage. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., countered with a proposal to fund all of DHS for two weeks, but Warnock declined to modify his request.

It was a familiar back-and-forth as Democrats have made repeated efforts to fund just parts of DHS through September. Republicans, however, have pushed to fund the entire department on a short-term basis while the two sides try to work out their differences.

Lankford said, “This is silly to break this up into aspects of who’s going to get funding and who’s not going to get funding.” While Warnock said that ICE, is “an unaccountable paramilitary force wreaking havoc on the streets of our country.”

White House highlights airport delays

The Trump administration, on various social media accounts, highlighted some of the fallout from the shutdown, which it blamed on Democrats.

“Right now, our heroic TSA officers are not being paid, and many cannot pay their rent, buy food, or afford to put gas in their cars,” the Department of Homeland Security said on X. “Some are even staying in airports overnight because they can’t afford their commute.”

Adam Stahl, TSA’s acting deputy administrator, cited the Philadelphia airport as one of the airports experiencing longer screening times for some passengers because more workers were calling out.

“The reality of the situation is this is going to get worse before it gets better if we don’t see any sort of action in Congress,” he told CNN.

In a separate post, the department said more than 366 TSA agents have left the force as a result of the shutdown, which is leaving critical gaps in staffing as each new recruit requires four to six months of training.