Is the DHS deal falling apart?

IN THIS EDITION

The DHS deal is on the rocks

Cherfilus-McCormick case is a problem for Jeffries, Democrats

Vault: Banking Democrats divided on Warsh meetings

House Intel sends Brennan docs to DOJ

THE TOP

The DHS deal is on the rocks

Happy Wednesday morning.

DHS shutdown, Day 39. Senate leaders are hitting more snags as they try to reach a deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.

Senate Democrats are demanding additional concessions after Republicans struggled to get President Donald Trump on board with a framework for the potential agreement — one that the president hasn’t even yet publicly endorsed.

Senate Republicans claim Democrats are moving the goalposts on a proposed deal to fund all of DHS except for ICE’s enforcement operations. GOP leaders say the proposal already includes some changes both parties agreed on in January, such as tens of millions of dollars of additional funding for body cameras and other concessions.

“I didn’t go down there and spend two hours with the president to get him to where a deal was, to only have it changed” by Democrats, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. “We can’t function that way.”

Democrats insist their position hasn’t changed. Any immigration enforcement funding must include new restrictions. Chief among these are a ban on face masks for federal agents and changes to warrant procedures, they said.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are already making preparations for the second step of the process — a party-line reconciliation bill that would fund ICE enforcement and a whole host of other GOP priorities, including elements of the SAVE America Act.

GOP members of the Senate Budget Committee held a meeting Tuesday night to begin gaming it out, even as some Senate Republicans are skeptical it’ll actually work.

DHS latest. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats would send a counteroffer with additional reforms to ICE. As of this morning, that counteroffer hasn’t been sent yet.

Democrats believe they’d lose a ton of leverage in their push to rein in ICE if they were to agree to the framework proposed by Republicans. Even those Democrats who voted with Republicans to end the last government shutdown aren’t on board.

“Until we get to the reforms that we want in ICE, we don’t want to vote for ICE funding, knowing that they already prefunded it,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), referring to the tens of billions of dollars in ICE funding that Republicans included in last year’s reconciliation bill.

On the GOP side, the Republican leadership team felt encouraged about party unity after Tuesday’s closed-door lunch meeting, though some conservatives voiced objections to the emerging plan.

“I don’t want to vote to defund ICE,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said. “I do want to vote to fund TSA.”

Trump has been relatively mum after a small group of GOP senators met with him at the White House Monday night to talk him out of his push to tie the SAVE America Act to DHS funding.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said it “would be helpful” if Trump publicly backed the framework, but he also accused Democrats of “walking away from” the deal. Thune called it unrealistic for Democrats to demand new ICE enforcement restrictions if that funding pot is being stripped out anyway.

More broadly, Republican senators feel as if they’ve already given multiple concessions to Democrats since the DHS standoff started. This includes sending border czar Tom Homan to de-escalate the situation in Minneapolis following January’s fatal shootings by federal agents.

Reconciliation 2.0. Senate GOP leaders — long skeptical of another reconciliation bill — are now moving ahead. It was a critical portion of their pitch to Trump to get the president to back off his demand that the SAVE America Act be linked to DHS funding.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the chief proponent of the voter ID and proof-of-citizenship legislation, said Tuesday that it would be “impossible” to pass that measure through reconciliation. Most Republicans would agree since reconciliation has strict rules that require proposals to have a direct budgetary impact.

Republicans could potentially include provisions to incentivize states to impose certain voting requirements. But that’s very different from mandating it outright.

Senate Republicans argued to Trump this would be “a down payment” on the SAVE America Act, according to Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who took part in the Monday meeting with the president.

Republicans could also use this reconciliation package as a vehicle to fund the Iran war.

Divided views. During Tuesday’s GOP lunch meeting, several Republican senators raised concerns about carving certain agencies’ funding out of appropriations bills and handling them via reconciliation, arguing it would set a bad precedent.

Other Republicans see an urgency to reopen DHS and alleviate the chaos and long lines at U.S. airports.

“I realize a lot of colleagues say that’s a slippery slope and sets a bad precedent. OK, but I want to get these people paid,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said after the Budget Committee meeting, referring to TSA employees.

Johnson predicted that Republicans would be “moving very quickly” on reconciliation. But another big question is how to offset the costs — which deficit hawks will likely demand — especially if they want to include defense funding.

— Andrew Desiderio and Laura Weiss

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HOUSE LEADERSHIP

Cherfilus-McCormick case is a problem for Jeffries, Democrats

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has made calling out GOP corruption a central theme of his party’s midterm messaging.

But now a member of Jeffries’ caucus is facing accusations of serious financial crimes. The New York Democrat is in an uncomfortable spot of trying to balance his own political needs with those of his own embattled member. Plus, the issue also touches on the Congressional Black Caucus, a key part of Jeffries’ power base.

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) is under federal criminal indictment for allegedly stealing $5 million in FEMA funds and using that money to help fund her 2021 congressional campaign. Other charges include tax fraud and the use of straw donors.

Cherfilus-McCormick — who allegedly purchased a huge diamond ring with the stolen funds — could face years in prison if convicted. Her criminal trial is currently scheduled to begin next month in Miami.

But Cherfilus-McCormick’s more pressing political concern is Thursday’s upcoming “trial” within the House Ethics Committee. This is a rare procedure that underscores the seriousness of the alleged violations. Expulsion is a real possibility for Cherfilus-McCormick if convicted, according to multiple Democratic lawmakers and aides.

A special investigative panel of the Ethics Committee released a 27-count “Statement of Alleged Violations” by Cherfilus-McCormick. This will be the evidence presented by Ethics Committee counsels during Thursday’s proceedings.

Jeffries told us Tuesday that Cherfilus-McCormick was “entitled to the presumption of innocence” and that he “will continue to stick by her in that regard” as she goes through the judicial and congressional processes.

We asked Jeffries if Democrats’ broader anti-corruption message aimed at Republicans should also apply to Cherfilus-McCormick.

House Democrats discussed Cherfilus-McCormick during their Steering & Policy meeting on Tuesday evening, per sources in the room. Among the topics: how the Florida Democrat was being treated in comparison to former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who was expelled from the House in December 2023. Santos was later convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Santos was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison, but that sentence was later commuted by Trump.

Some House Democrats we spoke to were uncomfortable with the optics of their party leadership defending Cherfilus-McCormick. One member said that if the Florida Democrat gets convicted, it would reflect poorly on the caucus as a whole. Another Democrat — also speaking anonymously — said if Cherfilus-McCormick is found guilty in Thursday’s hearing, he’d immediately call on her to resign.

It’s unlikely that Cherfilus-McCormick will testify in her own defense, although her lawyer may make a statement. Anything Cherfilus-McCormick says can be used in her federal criminal case, which gives her a big disincentive to cooperate.

We expect that the adjudicatory subcommittee — the eight-member panel hearing Thursday’s case — will issue a decision on the matter this week.

But the final decision on what sanctions Cherfilus-McCormick could face if convicted isn’t likely to come until after the upcoming recess.

– John Bresnahan, Ally Mutnick and Max Cohen

INTEL WATCH

House Intel sends Brennan docs to DOJ

The House Intelligence Committee voted behind closed doors Tuesday evening to send the Justice Department classified transcripts of interviews related to former CIA Director John Brennan.

The move is a clear sign that the Trump administration is pursuing a criminal case against the nation’s former top spy.

Brennan, 70, is a long-time target of President Donald Trump and his allies both on and off Capitol Hill.

The vote in the secretive intelligence panel was split along party lines and deeply divided the committee. Democrats felt as if they didn’t have enough time to review the material, which several lawmakers said they received on Friday.

The transcripts will not be released publicly. Lawmakers declined to comment as they left the session in the Capitol’s SCIF.

Brennan, the CIA director from 2013 to 2017, set up the counterintelligence investigation into Trump in 2016. Trump stripped Brennan of his security clearance in 2018 and again in 2025.

Separately, the Intelligence Committee also voted to release two transcripts tied to 2019 hearings with Michael Atkinson, the former intelligence community inspector general, the panel announced Tuesday night. The hearings were centered on Atkinson’s handling of the Ukraine whistleblower complaint, which spurred a House inquiry that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

FISA briefing. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Intelligence Committee Chair Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) held a FISA briefing for GOP lawmakers after votes Tuesday night.

Their goal is to sway Republican holdouts to back a clean extension of a key spy power, Section 702 of FISA. Senior Trump administration officials have called for a clean reauthorization of FISA, which is staring down an April 20 deadline.

The House is expected to vote on a clean FISA extension when it returns from a two-week recess in mid-April. The vote was originally planned for this week, but House GOP leaders punted because Republicans have major math problems in passing the bill.

Many House Republicans are skeptical of the underlying FISA programs and are demanding more changes. Some have said they won’t back any rule or underlying bill until Congress passes the SAVE America Act.

— Anthony Adragna, Briana Reilly and Jake Sherman

AND THERE’S MORE

NRCC’s big night. President Donald Trump will be the speaker at tonight’s NRCC March dinner. The event is expected to bring in tens of millions of dollars for the committee.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer raised $3.7 million for the dinner, including a $1 million transfer from his own campaign account.

Ad news: Madison Sheahan, the former deputy ICE director who’s running for Ohio’s 9th District, is up with her first ad of the cycle. The ad touts Sheahan’s work in the Trump administration, highlighting that ICE hired over 12,000 new agents and deported “over two million illegals.”

Sheahan is looking to unseat longtime Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) in a seat President Donald Trump carried in 2024.

— Jake Sherman and Max Cohen

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