March 23, 2026
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Trump to Thune: No deal with Democrats
Happy Monday morning.
The House and Senate are in session this week. The House returns Tuesday. The Senate, which has been in all weekend, is scheduled to confirm Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) as Department of Homeland Security secretary tonight. President Donald Trump is headlining the NRCC’s big March dinner in D.C. Wednesday night.
Trump said Saturday night that if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz by today, U.S. forces will blow up “their various power plants” beginning with the largest ones. Iran has threatened to retaliate. Much of Tehran has been plunged into darkness following Israeli airstrikes.
The reaction on Capitol Hill to Trump’s threats was muted, although Republicans continue to back the president on Iran. But this would be a dramatic escalation of the conflict as Trump has ordered Marine ground troops to the region.
News: With the DHS shutdown now in its 37th day, Senate Majority Leader John Thune approached Trump with a new proposal on Sunday — at the urging of his Senate Republican colleagues and even some White House aides.
Thune told Trump that Senate Republicans would support funding all of DHS except ICE, the agency at the center of the bitter partisan dispute over Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to senators and aides.
ICE funding could be handled later in a party-line reconciliation bill. Democrats would accept the offer, the South Dakota Republican informed the president.
Democrats wouldn’t get some of their chief demands — banning masks for federal agents or requiring judicial warrants — if reconciliation were used. Plus, TSA agents would get their paychecks and the security-line madness at airports would end.
But Trump said no, according to multiple sources. The president wants Republicans to stay in D.C. and keep fighting with Democrats over DHS funding and the SAVE America Act, the GOP’s voter ID and proof-of-citizenship bill.
Not only that, Trump warned that he’d publicly slam Senate Republicans if they left town for the upcoming recess. Trump also said he’d invite all the GOP senators and their families for Easter dinner at the White House. Some Republicans took that as a threat, not a reward.
In a Sunday night Truth Social post, Trump made clear his position: “I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.’”
Trump added: “Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
The Trump-Thune exchange shows how differently Republicans view the growing crisis over DHS, especially the chaos at many of America’s airports.
Trump has ordered ICE agents to be deployed at airports starting today. The TSA absences have meant growing, hours-long security delays at some of the nation’s busiest airports.
A lot of Republicans don’t like the idea of ICE agents patrolling airports, although they won’t complain in public. Even ICE officials were caught by surprise by Trump’s Saturday night order, according to CBS News. Some Democrats are privately giddy over the prospect, believing it will cause even more problems.
The real key here is that Trump believes he and Republicans are winning the DHS battle, while a lot of GOP lawmakers aren’t sure that’s the case.
“It’s not ICE’s mission to be there,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters on Sunday, warning about “additional tension” at already tense airports. Murkowski wants a DHS funding bill to be passed right now.
“It’s a mess,” said another Republican senator who didn’t want to be named. “No one is quite sure what’s going on.”
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has been in the middle of bipartisan DHS funding talks, acknowledged that Republicans have considered an “Everything but ICE” option to break the logjam.
“That is being discussed,” Collins said.
But Collins then raised the issue of how Homeland Security Investigations — an ICE unit that handles child-trafficking cases and other high-priority matters — wouldn’t get funded. Senate Republicans could propose cutting out only the money for removal operations instead and funding the rest of ICE and DHS.
“You really want to stop Homeland Security Investigations? That’s child trafficking, it’s drug smuggling, it’s counterfeit goods,” Collins added. “I don’t think we want to cut off Homeland Security Investigations.”
More bipartisan DHS negotiations are expected today, aides on both sides said.
GOP aides also said White House border czar Tom Homan may meet with Senate Republicans this week.
FISA. Aside from the DHS chaos, it’s less than a month from the nation’s foreign intelligence surveillance authority expiring.
Speaker Mike Johnson and his House Republican leadership team were planning to bring a clean extension of FISA’s Section 702 to the floor this week. But on Friday, GOP leaders decided to cancel any vote on the bill until after the two-week recess, which begins Friday.
Hardline conservatives have two issues with FISA. Several of them won’t vote to allow Section 702 to move forward until the Senate passes SAVE or the legislation is otherwise moving. Other Republicans have issues with FISA as currently written and want reforms to the program.
Johnson had no prayer of being able to pass the bill this week, since Democrats wouldn’t have helped the GOP with a rule or rounded up support to pass it under suspension.
We’ll be curious to see how Johnson plans to get out of this. But, as of now, he’ll have to pass the FISA renewal bill the week of April 13, just days before the program’s expiration. And in many ways, that could help instill some urgency in a reluctant House Republican Conference.
– John Bresnahan, Laura Weiss, Samantha Handler, Andrew Desiderio and Jake Sherman
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Vault: Waters demands formal housing negotiation
News. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is rallying House Democrats to go to conference on the housing bill.
Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, is planning to send a “Dear Colleague” letter this morning that lays out why she’s demanding a formal conference negotiation with the Senate.
Waters says in the letter that the Senate scrapped provisions House Democrats fought for that would’ve made the legislation stronger, according to a copy we obtained.
The veteran California Democrat adds there’s a need to address stakeholder concerns raised since the Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, including warnings “about whether the bill now curtails the construction of new homes and creates other unintended consequences.”
Democrats on the committee have reservations about several policies in the bill, including how it cracks down on institutional investors owning “built-to-rent” housing. Democrats also say co-ops were left out, which is a big deal for members from New York City.
In all, the letter details 33 changes HFSC Democrats want, according to a copy viewed by Punchbowl News.
The committee’s Democrats held a call on Sunday night, where members backed up the push to go to conference, according to a Democratic aide.
Inside the standoff. Waters’ call for a bicameral conference comes as House Republicans are threatening to demand the formal process too. Waters and HFSC Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) are both rejecting the Senate’s bill. House members are seething about feeling cut out of the negotiating process.
But it’s worth noting that while House Democrats and Republicans can agree on not wanting to get jammed by the Senate, they disagree about crucial changes to the bill. For example, HFSC Democrats want to scrap the legislation’s temporary ban on a central bank digital currency. House GOP conservatives are demanding a permanent ban.
The whole episode is inflaming tensions between the HFSC and Senate Banking Committee’s GOP chairs, as we told you in Sunday’s Vault. Banking leaders are resisting the calls for a conference and pressuring their House counterparts to swallow the Senate bill.
Key senators are counting on President Donald Trump to force the House’s hand. But Trump hasn’t been focused on the housing bill. The president is instead consumed by his push for the SAVE America Act and the war with Iran.
If House and Senate leaders can’t work out their differences, the housing affordability push could collapse. That would be a big missed opportunity for the GOP to do something about cost-of-living issues before the midterms.
Another bit of HFSC news. Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) is leading a group of Financial Services Democrats in a letter demanding Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testify before the panel about the administration’s policy on lifting Iranian oil sanctions.
— Laura Weiss, Brendan Pedersen and Max Cohen
Tech: Family groups band together on AI
Nine conservative and family groups that are prominent in tech policy debates are launching a combined effort on Monday “to prioritize the interests of children, workers, and creators” on Capitol Hill and in state capitals.
The Alliance for a Better Future, which includes the Heritage Foundation and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, is jumping into the furious policy debates around the future of artificial intelligence and young people online.
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“The world’s most powerful technology companies are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into political campaigns and lobbying efforts to give AI companies regulatory and legal amnesty,” said a statement from the group’s CEO, Janet Kelly, who was Virginia’s secretary of health and human resources under Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
ABF, which also includes the American Principles Project and the Institute for Family Studies, is kicking off at a time when policy and campaign fights over tech have grown intense.
On Friday, the White House released a framework for how it would like the Hill to regulate AI. The proposal includes strict limits on the kids protections that states can put in place on the tech.
But last year, social conservatives’ emphasis on those protections led them to break from pro-business voices on the right. They helped defeat President Donald Trump’s hopes to broadly preempt states on AI without a comprehensive federal replacement.
In addition, while the battles over kids and teens on social media could get wrapped together with AI debates on the Hill, they’re separate for now.
Groups within ABF have rejected some recent House bills on kids online, which they say do too little to bring accountability to platforms like Instagram while going too far to preempt states.
Super-PACs allied with the AI industry are also planning to spend more than $100 million to elect candidates from both parties who support preemptive, light-touch regulation. As an advocacy group, ABF can’t focus on opposing those candidates but is highlighting the tech funding in its own messages.
ABF is also launching with a lengthy video featuring testimony from parents whose kids died after using chatbots. It warns “AI is built to exploit our families” and urges good jobs and “commonsense guardrails.”
The group is sharing the video with lawmakers. It plans to spend more than $10 million on its advertising and broader advocacy this year.
The new effort is also circulating polling it conducted that found more than four out of five likely voters support AI safeguards for kids and adults.
— Ben Brody
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PRESENTED BY EXACT SCIENCES
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What we’re watching
Tuesday: The House Rules Committee will meet to prepare several bills for floor consideration.
The Senate Armed Services Committee will have a hearing on low-cost munitions. The Senate Judiciary Committee will have a hearing on Arctic Frost. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will have a hearing on “arms control and transforming international security at the State Department.”
Wednesday: The House Appropriations Committee will have a hearing with OPM Director Scott Kupor.
The House Homeland Security Committee will have a hearing on the effects of the DHS shutdown with top officials from the Coast Guard, TSA, CISA and FEMA.
The House Financial Services Committee will have a hearing on “tokenization and the future of securities.”
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will get a briefing on the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Senate Armed Services Committee will get a briefing on Operation Epic Fury.
Thursday: The Senate Armed Services Committee will get a briefing on Space Command and Strategic Command.
The Senate Banking Committee will have a hearing on the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank.
The House Appropriations Committee will have a hearing with GAO on the federal building fund.
— Jake Sherman
THE AI INNOVATORS
We released the latest installment in our series, The AI Innovators, last week. In this edition, we explored how artificial intelligence is reshaping academic instruction and the workforce through innovative educational tools.
In classrooms, instructors are using AI to personalize lesson plans and handle administrative tasks. Educational institutions are also incorporating the technology into skills they teach students. And older or displaced workers are using it to gain new competitive abilities.
With these advancements in AI, policymakers are thinking of ways educators and trainers can use AI while also balancing ethical concerns associated with the technology.
You can check out the latest segment focused on education, listen to the accompanying podcast and check back in on April 2 for our next edition.
– Shania Shelton
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