The Senate-W.H. deal will be hard to pull off

IN THIS EDITION

Graham holds up W.H-Senate deal

Senate deal gives Johnson a new headache

Cotton PAC polling says voters want DHS to ‘tone down’

Liccardo’s Silicon Valley mission

THE TOP

Graham holds up W.H-Senate deal

Happy Friday morning.

The Senate is struggling to reach an agreement to quickly pass a massive government funding deal negotiated by Democrats and President Donald Trump.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) emerged as the primary obstacle to a fast floor vote late Thursday night. Graham railed against the funding package over a House-passed measure repealing a provision tied to senators whose phone records were obtained by the Justice Department as part of its 2020 election probe.

Senate leaders will try again today to secure an agreement to pass the massive $1.2 trillion, six-bill package, although any individual senator can drag out the floor process for days.

There’s a serious time crunch, with funding expiring at midnight for a big chunk of the federal government. Yet even then, the House likely isn’t returning until Monday, with no guarantee the chamber can pass anything. Hill leaders and the White House hope to avert a full-blown funding crisis for the Pentagon and other key departments.

Senate Democrats and the White House reached an agreement earlier Thursday to strip funding for the Department of Homeland Security from the six-bill package and replace it with a two-week stopgap measure to allow for negotiations over ICE restrictions. The House’s unanimous repeal of the senatorial payouts provision remained in the DHS text, however.

Graham stormed into Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s office late Thursday night, demanding it be removed. He later complained to reporters about the House’s move.

Graham’s crusade on this issue — he was one of the GOP senators whose phone records were secretly subpoenaed by DOJ — has become a lonely one. Plus, if Graham got his way, the funding package would face resistance in the House.

Leaving the Capitol last night, Thune told us that there were still “snags on both sides.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer complained that “Republicans need to get their act together,” but he declined multiple times to say whether there are any Democratic objections.

The Senate is convening at 11 a.m. and will try again to clear the funding package. Without an agreement from all 100 senators, it would take a few days to pass the measure.

Rough road ahead. Schumer took a major gamble when he threatened a government shutdown less than a week before the Jan. 30 funding deadline.

If the Senate can break its procedural logjam, it’ll have paid off for him. Democrats will have secured a legislative path to rein in Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown without derailing a funding package that contains many domestic priorities, especially earmarks for vulnerable incumbents.

But the next phase is a complicated negotiation that could spiral out of control. And the political pressures over ICE that prompted this week’s shutdown showdown aren’t going away.

Congress will have just two weeks to renegotiate and pass a full-year DHS spending bill that incorporates Democrats’ demands for changes to ICE’s operations and tactics.

Democratic hardliners, unhappy over the party’s failure to secure a legislative win during the last shutdown fight, are already framing the DHS clash as a chance to prove to voters that Democrats won’t back down. It’s also another test of Schumer’s leadership.

“When we stick together and we fight for our values, we can win,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said. “I didn’t like the fact that we gave up on the health care fight too early. I thought we could have won that fight. This is an opportunity for us to stick together.”

Senate Democrats released a list of demands earlier this week, including tightening rules for ICE on warrants, requiring federal agents to wear body cameras, and barring the use of masks.

Yet on the left, the progressive base is already panning these as too weak, with some arguing that Democrats shouldn’t have even agreed to continue funding DHS at current levels for two weeks.

Schumer is catching a lot of the heat for that, even though high-profile progressives like Murphy are on board with the strategy. Murphy acknowledged that “We’re not going to fix everything,” but said the proposed reforms are “impactful.”

MAGA backlash. In the middle of it all is Trump, whose conciliatory posture surprised senators this week. Trump made clear that he didn’t want another shutdown, a sign of the extended hangover from the record 43-day shutdown last fall.

Republicans are generally amenable to the Democratic push, acknowledging at the outset that changes are necessary after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last weekend.

But conservatives — upset that GOP leaders and the White House gave in to Democrats’ demand to separate DHS from the rest of the funding package — want to use the upcoming talks to secure their own policy priorities. Conservatives also want to avoid what they view as a one-sided negotiation.

“I don’t like the process. I don’t like what we’re doing,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said. “I support ICE.”

Some of the conservatives are already making one demand of their own: A crackdown on so-called sanctuary cities.

Yet Democrats feel like they have very little incentive to offer anything to Republicans, especially on a GOP effort they’ve long opposed — targeting Democratic-run cities that don’t comply with federal immigration enforcement. It’s also unclear whether the White House wants to adopt a similar posture in the upcoming negotiations with Democrats.

On top of that, conservatives and Trump allies are already recoiling at a key Democratic demand on warrants.

“I’ll tell you this — we’re not legislating stupid shit,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). “We’re not telling [federal agents] they need judicial warrants when they already have administrative warrants … Some of these ideas that the Democrats are floating out there are terrible.”

Fly Out Day!! Watch Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) on whether she’ll run again in 2028, DHS policy and much more.

— Andrew Desiderio and Laura Weiss

Join us for a conversation with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) on Thursday, Feb. 5, at 8:30 a.m. ET. We’ll discuss the news of the day and federal funding for medical research and cures across diseases and conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease. RSVP!

HOUSE HEADACHES

Senate deal gives Johnson a new headache

Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republican leadership have two major hurdles to overcome next month.

First: This weekend or early next week, House GOP leaders will have to figure out how to pass both the massive five-bill FY2026 spending package and the separate stopgap DHS funding bill.

Second: If and when there’s an agreement to overhaul the Department of Homeland Security funding bill, Johnson is going to have to wrestle with a very conflicted House that’s pulling him in a multitude of different directions.

Let’s first discuss the immediate issue: the House’s passage of the five-bill FY2026 spending package and the short-term DHS funding patch.

In theory, it should be easy for the House Republican leadership to jam through these two measures. The five-bill funding package cleared the House just last week with 341 votes. And a two-week DHS funding patch, on its own, is defensible. Republicans should back it because President Donald Trump is in favor of it.

Democrats should back it because, theoretically, it will allow for negotiations on changes to DHS immigration enforcement policy, their main ask in the last week. It’s in direct response to the two deadly shootings by federal officers in Minnesota that set off a national uproar. And that gets to the core of Trump’s signature issue — immigration.

But nothing is easy in the House.

House Democrats have made abundantly clear that agreement — the two-week DHS CR plus a re-vote on the five bills — was a deal that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer cut with the White House. If Johnson needs Democratic votes to get the measures through the House, that could come at a cost.

The House GOP leadership has two choices in passing the funding packages. They can try to clear it under a rule, which requires a simple majority. Or they can hope for a two-thirds majority under suspension of the rules.

A rule would require Johnson finding 218 Republicans to vote to pass it — a tough task in his barely-there majority. But passing it under suspension would require dozens of Democratic votes, which could give House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries a lot of power. This doesn’t seem likely right now.

Every which way. During the duration of the two-week CR, Johnson is going to have a lot to balance. The hardline House Freedom Caucus doesn’t want any changes in the DHS bill, which means Johnson will need Trump to help win over their votes. Changes to warrant rules for ICE and CBP officers are unpopular among House Republicans. But that seems to be a necessity for most Democrats.

Then, Johnson is going to have to deal with a number of ancillary issues, ranging from lawmakers who want the chamber to extend the sales season for E15 fuel to others who would like the speaker to somehow force Senate Majority Leader John Thune to hold a vote on the SAVE Act.

And remember: Johnson is going to have a one-vote cushion beginning next week.

House Republicans have an 11 a.m. call today to discuss the legislative outlook.

– Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan

IN THE ROOM

Cotton PAC polling says voters want DHS to ‘tone down’

New polling from Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) PAC shows that a plurality of Americans want ICE to tone it down, but they continue to support deportations.

America One Policies PAC, the Cotton-linked group, commissioned a poll that showed 41% of respondents want “immigration and enforcement and deportations” to continue “but ICE’s tactics need to be toned down to avoid unnecessary harm and confrontation.” Eight-eight percent of Republicans and independents agree with that statement.

Just 24% of respondents said they identify with this statement: “ICE’s aggressive tactics are necessary. Illegal immigration is a serious problem and we need tough enforcement to remove people who are here illegally.”

The polling underscores that President Donald Trump must curtail ICE’s hard-line enforcement approach or face a political backlash.

But Americans still agree that the Trump administration should continue with the deportation agenda.

The poll also showed that 78% of respondents agree that the government should deport immigrants who are in the country illegally and have criminal records. Fifty-six percent of respondents say they support deporting people who are in the country illegally and arrived within the last four years. And 52% want to deport all undocumented immigrants in the United States.

The basic takeaway here is that, according to the PAC’s polling, Americans are comfortable with deportation, but ICE needs to change its tactics. Cotton discussed this poll with Senate Republicans at lunch on Thursday.

– Jake Sherman

THE MONEY GAME

Liccardo’s Silicon Valley mission

Freshman Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo (Calif.) is positioning himself as a bridge between Silicon Valley and his party’s most vulnerable lawmakers.

Liccardo has raised $309,100 for Democratic Frontliners who visited Silicon Valley with him.

Among the members Liccardo has brought to the Valley for fundraising are Democratic Reps. Steven Horsford (Nev.), Adam Gray (Calif.), Gabe Vasquez (N.M.) and Eugene Vindman (Va.).

Liccardo, the former mayor of San Jose, replaced longtime ex-Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) in 2024. The 55-year-old Liccardo is seeking to establish himself as a leader in the tech space, even as many Democrats have grown more adversarial toward the industry in recent years. Silicon Valley’s embrace of President Donald Trump hasn’t helped matters either.

Liccardo has also contributed an additional $140,000 to Frontliners and $90,000 to the DCCC, separate from his dues. He has a fundraiser with Democratic leadership scheduled for the summer and is planning to bring more Frontliners to Silicon Valley this year.

Liccardo calls his initiative “Innovation for Good.” He told us the goal is to “rebuild some bridges” between some skeptical Democrats and the tech industry as he seeks to flip the House blue.

— Max Cohen

THE CAMPAIGN

Fundraising news: Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) raised $615,000 in Q4 and ended 2025 with $3.2 million in cash on hand. Wittman is a top DCCC target.

Democrat Scott Colom, a Mississippi district attorney seeking to knock off Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), raised $427,000 in Q4 of 2025.

Endorsement watch: ModSquad is endorsing former Rep. Mary Peltola’s (D-Alaska) Senate run. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), the group’s honorary chair, said Peltola “knows how to win.”

— Max Cohen and Ally Mutnick

MOMENTS

CLIPS