Schumer starts shutdown blame game
Plus: Trump searches for Minnesota off-ramp, Suozzi regrets DHS funding vote and House Dems hold immigration enforcement field hearing in New Orleans.
First Things First
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is already playing the shutdown blame game days before government funding is set to expire for a chunk of federal departments and agencies.
Schumer said this afternoon that Senate Republicans would be responsible for a funding lapse on Friday if Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) refused Democrats’ call for him to split the DHS funding bill from a package of measures filled with labor, healthcare, education, military, transportation and housing priorities they helped negotiate.
“If Leader Thune puts those five bills on the floor this week, we can pass them right away,” Schumer said. “If not, Republicans will again be responsible for another government shutdown.”
A spokesperson for Thune confirmed this afternoon that the Senate will begin the procedural steps today to move ahead as planned on the House-passed six-bill minibus, with the chamber back in session tomorrow.
Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee Chair Katie Britt (R-Ala.) called the death of Alex Pretti—the 37-year-old ICU nurse who was shot moments after the stood between an agent and a woman whom an agent pushed to the ground—tragic but leaned hard on supporting law enforcement and DHS’s broader mission. She also pushed back on rhetoric from the left that she characterized as endangering officers and communities. Britt urged the Senate to fund DHS and other agencies to avoid a shutdown, but also backed a fair investigation.
New Hampshire Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan became the sixth and seventh of eight Senate Democrats who voted in November to end the longest shutdown in U.S. history and oppose the DHS funding bill.
Shaheen said that DHS needs major reform after the shooting of Alex Pretti and said she would vote against the DHS bill until reforms and an independent probe with Minnesota law enforcement are in place. She also pressed Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to bring the House back to act if the Senate splits the five non-DHS bills, an unlikely outcome.
Hassan echoed Shaheen’s calls for reforms, including concrete ICE guardrails—including body cameras, judicial arrest warrants and due process—while calling on the Trump administration to refocus immigration enforcement on truly violent offenders.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), the eight Democratic yes vote in November, said in a statement that the Minneapolis immigration operation should immediately end and argued Renee Good and Pretti should still be alive while criticizing ICE’s tactics and backing deportation of criminal migrants along with a path to citizenship. He opposes defunding or abolishing ICE and says he won’t vote for a shutdown, noting DHS already has major funding and calling instead to strip DHS from the minibus and force a broader debate on immigration reform.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) formally summoned ICE, USCIS and CBP leaders to testify by early February, citing DHS’s “extraordinary” funding levels and Congress’s duty to oversee immigration enforcement. House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) sent similar letters to agency leadership on Saturday, signaling that GOP oversight pressure is ramping up even as DHS funding hangs in the balance.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 3.
Correction: The Sunday edition of Congress Nerd identified Pretti as an “ICE” nurse instead of “ICU.” The web version has been updated. I regret the error.
CN Trivia question: What makes the Minneapolis VA Medical Center—where Alex Pretti worked as an ICU nurse—one of just five sites nationwide when it comes to caring for severely injured veterans?
(The answer is at the bottom of the newsletter.)
