Dems, White House Strike Deal Ahead of Shutdown Deadline

A still-snowy Congress is looking to avoid a government shutdown.
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Good evening. President Trump's border czar today promised a safer, more targeted approach as he takes over immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis. "President Trump and I along with others in the administration have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made. That's exactly what I'm doing here," Tom Homan said at a morning news conference, but he also vowed that the administration's mission will continue and that he will stay in Minnesota "until the problem's gone."

The Senate and White House worked to resolve a related problem: funding the government amid disagreements over the Department of Homeland Security and Trump's immigration crackdown. Democrats and the White House announced a deal in the evening, leaving senators rushing to line up a vote. Here's your evening update.

Democrats, White House Strike Funding Deal Ahead of Shutdown Deadline

Senate Democrats and the White House reached a deal Thursday to stave off a prolonged government shutdown when current funding for many federal agencies expires on Friday night.

The agreement reportedly calls for the Senate to vote on five full-year spending bills from a package passed by the House last week while replacing a sixth bill covering the Department of Homeland Security with a two-week stopgap measure that allows for more negotiations on policies to rein in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement tactics.

As negotiations intensified, the Senate voted 45-55 against moving ahead with debate on a six-bill funding package approved last week by the House. Eight Republicans joined with all Senate Democrats in voting to block the funding package, though one of the eight was Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who switched from a yes vote so as to be able to bring the funding bills up for another vote once a deal was struck.

The six-bill House-passed package would provide funding through September covering more than 75% of the federal government's annual discretionary spending, including the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, State and Treasury, But the inclusion of $64.4 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security threatened to derail the larger package, as Democratic anger over the Trump administration's immigration enforcement swelled following last Saturday's killing of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.

Democrats insisted that the DHS funding bill be stripped out of the larger package while making clear that they would be willing to quickly approve the remaining five bills. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer yesterday laid out reforms that Democrats want to see made to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, insisting that those demands be met before his party agrees to fund DHS. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Thursday added a demand that the deportation of American citizens be banned.

In addition to ICE, the DHS funding bill would also cover the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration and other agencies.

A final sticking point: Negotiations over the measure to temporarily fund DHS and allow more time for negotiations reportedly centered on the length of the stopgap measure, with Senate Democrats seeking to extend current funding by two weeks or less. Republicans were looking for "no less than four weeks" of funding, GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told reporters.

What's next: Senate leaders reportedly were working to secure an agreement to speed passage of the funding deal, with hopes that a vote on the five full-year spending bills and the stopgap for DHS could happen as soon as tonight.

With the midnight Friday deadline drawing closer, a short-term funding lapse appears likely given that the House isn't scheduled to be back from its recess until Monday and lawmakers there will need to vote on changes made by the Senate.

House Republican leaders reportedly were considering trying to have lawmakers come back Sunday if the Senate approves the funding bills tonight. Conservative hardliners in the House Republican conference have already come out against reopening the funding package and have threatened to seek their own demands for a revamped DHS bill, presenting challenges for House Speaker Mike Johnson and potentially complicating final passage. "How quickly Johnson can quell House infighting will determine how long a partial government shutdown will last," Politico's Meredith Lee Hill suggested in a post on X.

President Trump publicly endorsed the new deal in a social media post Thursday evening. "Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan 'YES' Vote," he wrote.

The bottom line: Congress is set to blow past the Friday night shutdown deadline, but the Senate has at least reached a revised funding deal to prevent a prolonged shutdown. The process could move quickly from here...or not.

Numbers of the Day: $496 Million and $22 Billion

President Trump's deployment of National Guard troops and other military personnel to U.S. cities cost about half a billion dollars in 2025, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this week.

In response to an inquiry from Sen. Jeff Merkley, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, CBO calculated that it cost the federal government approximately $496 million from June 2025 to December 2025 to "activate, deploy, and compensate" National Guard troops and a small number of Marines who had been sent by Trump to six cities - Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon.

As a rule of thumb, CBO said it costs between $18 million and $21 million per month to deploy 1,000 National Guard personnel in a U.S. city, depending on the local cost of living. As of December 2025, when National Guard troops remained in three cities, the monthly bill for the deployments came to $93 million a month.

CBO noted that the marginal cost of deployment is higher for National Guard personnel than for active-duty troops, because the latter are already receiving full pay and benefits.

Immigration crackdown is big business: A separate report from Financial Times indicates that for-profit corporations have been paid more than $22 billion by the Trump administration for services related to its aggressive immigration crackdown.

"Consultants, tech groups, charter airlines and a gravel company headed by an ally of the U.S. president have been among the biggest beneficiaries of a surge in spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection," the FT reports. "The funding boom began after Trump's second inauguration last January and has accelerated since the passage of the 'big beautiful bill,' which became law in July."

Since January 2025, the consulting firm Deloitte has been awarded contracts worth more than $100 million by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, while the data and analytics firm Palantir has received contracts worth more than $80 million, the FT said.

Other major companies providing services include Microsoft, Amazon and Motorola Solutions.

CSI Aviation, which brokers charter flights, has been the largest contractor for ICE, receiving contracts worth more than $1.2 billion. For CBP, the top contractor has been Fisher Sand & Gravel, a company run by a major Republican donor that has been awarded more than $6 billion since July to build sections of the southern border wall.

Obamacare Enrollment Drops by More Than 1 Million

Enrollment in health care plans sold through the federal Affordable Care Act marketplace fell by more than 1 million compared to last year as higher premiums kicked in for some participants.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported this week that about 23 million people signed up for ACA health plans in the 30 states that rely on the federal marketplace as of January 15, the end date for the open enrollment period. During the same period last year, about 24.2 million people signed up for coverage in those states, a record high.

The record enrollment in 2025 was driven in part by the more generous subsidies provided by Congress during and after the Covid pandemic, which helped boost enrollment four years in a row. Although Democrats wanted to extend the subsidies, Republicans allowed them to expire in 2026, helping spark the record government shutdown last fall as lawmakers battled over the issue.

Kevin Patterson, who runs Colorado's health insurance marketplace, told The Hill that it was encouraging to see the enrollment numbers record "only a slight dip," though it's also troubling to see so many people cancel their coverage due to cost. Some experts have warned that the enrollment numbers could drop off sharply over the course of the year as more people struggle to afford their more costly premiums each month.

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