How will this DHS shutdown end?

IN THIS EDITION

How to solve the DHS shutdown — or not

Impeach Trump? House Dems say not so fast

Florida upset sparks GOP redistricting concerns

Vault: Lawmakers drop landmark tribal housing bill

THE TOP

How to solve the DHS shutdown — or not

Happy Thursday morning.

OK, so now what?

It’s Day 40 of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. The Senate remains at a crippling impasse over a Republican proposal to fund all of DHS except for ICE enforcement.

Senate Democrats argue this proposed framework doesn’t do nearly enough to rein in President Donald Trump’s harsh immigration crackdown, which has included other DHS elements such as CBP and Homeland Security Investigations.

Trump has been no help here, as he has publicly declined to back the Senate GOP proposal.

“Donald Trump is all over the place seemingly without a clue of what’s going on,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “And they’re still… afraid of what he might do.”

But Democrats are little better. Their latest counteroffer included some demands that the White House was previously open to. Yet it also reprised others that GOP leaders have already ruled out.

“They didn’t just move the goalposts. They tossed them out of the stadium,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said of Democrats.

So how does Congress get out of this mess? Let’s go over a few possible scenarios.

Thune, Schumer cut a deal. One of the Democrats’ biggest sticking points with the current framework is that CBP and HSI would be fully funded, and there wouldn’t be restrictions on the Trump administration using those agencies for immigration enforcement.

Resolving this could clear the path to a deal. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said “there’s some room” to negotiate, and senators were discussing the issue on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

Several Senate Democrats have indicated that modest changes to the framework proposal could win their support.

“I would vote for a bill that funded CBP but saved ICE for a longer-term discussion,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told us. “I don’t want to chop ICE in parts and fund one part and not the other because I think dollars are fungible.”

But there are lots of Senate Democrats who won’t vote for anything that funds DHS, especially ICE. Across the aisle, there are conservatives who’ve all but ruled out voting for something that doesn’t fully fund ICE.

Plus, any Senate deal would also need to pass the House. Several House Democrats told us that they can’t vote for a deal that funds CBP. But Speaker Mike Johnson could probably put a Senate-passed bill on the floor and garner a healthy majority of members from both parties.

Picking off the mods. Eventually, the pressure of TSA-related airport chaos could push just enough Senate Democrats to fold. We’re watching eight to 12 Senate Democrats who are retiring or lean more moderate. This group has supported shutdown-ending deals in the past.

If the White House and Thune think they can’t get a deal with Senate Democratic leaders, they could incorporate some proposals that appeal to rank-and-file Democrats into legislative text and see if any moderates bite.

We’ll note a trio of House Democratic moderates met Wednesday with Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), the lead GOP negotiator on DHS. There’s plenty of angst among House Democrats as well, although the “Defund ICE” faction is very vocal and can’t be ignored.

No deal. This situation seems entirely unsustainable at the moment, especially with the crisis unfolding at U.S. airports. Senators also badly want to leave town for a scheduled two-week recess.

Yet it’s possible this stalemate could continue to drag on. Thune could keep forcing procedural votes on DHS funding in order to up the pressure on Democrats, as he’s doing again later today.

Democratic leaders have boxed themselves in by publicly releasing the 10 changes to ICE that they were seeking. How can top Democrats — especially Schumer — back off on those now?

And the White House isn’t doing itself any favors with Democrats as it sends ICE agents to more than a dozen airports across the country. Plus, Trump, distracted by the Iran war, is nowhere to be found in this fight even as Republicans insist he’s behind this framework. How could Democrats do a deal with Trump under these conditions?

Reconciliation news. House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) told attendees at a fundraiser Tuesday night for Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kan.) that if Republicans put together a reconciliation bill, it will include tax policies, according to multiple sources familiar with the remarks.

Smith was reiterating that he doesn’t think a second reconciliation bill is realistic for the GOP. But Smith added that if Republicans are going to pursue reconciliation, taxes could help unify the party.

Ways and Means included a ton of tax cuts and some tax hikes in the One Big Beautiful Bill, so it would be harder to find unifying provisions in the second go-around. But the GOP would need items to rally around with an incredibly thin House margin.

— Andrew Desiderio, Laura Weiss, Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan

TODAY: Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) joins us at our summit focused on agricultural resilience and American farmers. Doors open at noon and the program starts at 1 p.m. ET. RSVP now!

ICYMI: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) joined us Wednesday for a conversation on the reliability of the electric grid and why permitting reform is crucial. You can read the key takeaways from the conversation here.

HOUSE DEMS

Impeach Trump? House Dems say not so fast

In 2018, House Democrats won the majority on the back of an anti-Donald Trump fervor fueled by an impeachment rallying cry.

Eight years later, Democrats are favored to win the House again. But after impeaching Trump twice during their last spell in the majority, most Democrats aren’t clamoring for a third try.

House Democratic leadership insists any talk of impeachment is a distraction. Moderates want to focus on pocketbook issues. And even progressives acknowledge that there’s little to be gained from starting a process that’s destined to fail in the Senate.

“Literally no Democrats are talking about this,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said. “This is not something that comes up in our discussions at all.”

Reality check. The only way Trump will be impeached for a third time is if Democrats win the House in November. Even then, Democrats know getting 67 votes to convict Trump in the Senate isn’t likely.

It would be a huge risk if one of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ first acts as speaker would be impeaching Trump.

“The reality is we know that Trump, regardless of any impeachment vote, is not going to get convicted by the Senate,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (Calif.), the top Oversight Committee Democrat.

“When is it productive to take votes on this, and when is it productive for us to be out in the court of public opinion?” added Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), the Congressional Progressive Caucus chair.

Some members of the House Democratic Caucus have still pushed ahead with impeachment in the minority, including Reps. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) and Al Green (D-Texas). The House tabled the Green resolution in December, with Democratic leadership voting “present” and issuing a statement saying they were focused on making life affordable.

But it might not be so easy for Democratic leadership to dodge this question if they take the majority, just like it wasn’t for then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi back in 2019. Pelosi resisted for months until the Trump-Ukraine scandal broke.

There’s the prospect that Democrats could open an impeachment inquiry into Trump without impeaching Trump. This is what House Republicans did with former President Joe Biden last Congress. This would give what’s likely to be extensive Trump investigations by Democrats a little more impetus.

But for now, House Democratic leaders have tamped down the noise by focusing on going after Trump cabinet officials, like former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

The politics. Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 faced resistance from moderate Democrats who thought the exercise would hurt them among swing voters.

“We have bigger priorities to focus on,” Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.), the House’s battleground leadership representative, said. “We should listen to the American people that basically feel they’ve been betrayed by this administration when it comes to being able to make ends meet.”

Democrats also recognize that in toss-up districts, they’ll need to win over some of the same voters who went for Trump in 2024. The House battlefield is historically small and Democrats will need to capture some heavily red districts if they want to build a sizable majority.

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) suggested another impeachment could backfire by “firing up the Republican base.”

“We’ve seen this twice already,” Cuellar said of impeachment. “To do it a third time won’t work.”

— Max Cohen

REDISTRICTING WARS

Florida upset sparks GOP redistricting concerns

Florida Republicans are spooked.

A Democrat just flipped a Palm Beach County state house district that President Donald Trump won by 11 points in 2024. That upset only compounded growing fears that Trump voters — especially Latinos — are turning on Republicans.

Amid all this uncertainty, Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature is getting ready to push through a revised congressional map next month to create anywhere from two to five new red seats.

But now, Republicans in the congressional delegation are beginning to publicly warn lawmakers in Tallahassee that an over-aggressive remap could backfire.

“Don’t do it. I’ve said it from the beginning,” said Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), a former state house speaker. “I’ve been around enough reapportionments to know it’s a slippery slope.”

The 2026 strategy. Florida has increasingly become a central piece of Republicans’ redistricting strategy. As Democrats strike back with new maps in California and Virginia, Florida is Trump’s last chance to tilt the House battleground in his favor.

But this plan relies on Latino voters sticking with the GOP like they did in 2024, a banner year for the GOP in Florida. That’s far from certain, and some Florida Republicans are warning that such a move is perilous.

“You could potentially do two [new GOP seats,]” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said. “I think after that, you are really, really, really, really risking a very large overreach, which I think is in the Democrats’ best interest.”

The special elections in Florida this week brought fresh worries. The state house seat that Democrats flipped is especially satisfying because it includes Mar-a-Lago. Meanwhile, a Democrat is on the verge of flipping a state senate district that Trump won by seven points.

Democrats’ response. Democrats say Tuesday’s elections have shaken up their midterm strategy and that they’ll go on offense in Florida regardless of any GOP remap.

Here’s what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told us.

At a minimum, Jeffries said, Democrats can target the three South Florida Republicans — Diaz-Balart and Reps. Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar — and GOP Rep. Brian Mast, who represents the Treasure Coast.

If Republicans redraw, Jeffries said they could create even more opportunities for Democrats.

Florida saw a big lurch to the right at the presidential level in 2024, leaving Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz, Lois Frankel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Darren Soto looking more vulnerable. All are targets in redistricting and represent significant populations of Latino voters.

“They need to be really careful,” Gimenez said of the legislature’s remap. Lawmakers should study the special election results, he said. “They should look at what happened there. By trying to create more, you may end up with less.”

Gimenez also said he’s warned the Trump administration: “We have lost ground with Hispanics due to what happened with immigration.”

– Ally Mutnick, Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan

THE CAMPAIGN

Money news. The NRCC said it raised a record $36.8 million at its Wednesday night dinner with President Donald Trump.

Ad news. House Majority Forward is running an ad buy accusing Republicans of causing chaos at airports. Here’s one of the spots, which calls on Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) to fund TSA. The total buy is in the low six figures.

Maine Senate. Gov. Janet Mills is airing another ad attacking Senate Democrstic candidate Graham Platner over his comments on sexual assault. Mills and Platner are locked in an increasingly bitter Democratic primary to take on incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins. This latest Mills ad features a rape survivor who criticizes Platner for blaming victims of sexual assault.

Michigan news: Rep. John James’ (R-Mich.) campaign for governor is hiring Alex Bruesewitz as a senior adviser. Bruesewitz is also a senior adviser to Trump’s Never Surrender PAC.

Endorsement news. New Politics is endorsing Scranton, Pa., Mayor Paige Cognetti in Pennsylvania’s 8th District. Cognetti is running for a chance to unseat Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.).

— Max Cohen

MOMENTS

CLIPS