Republicans Announce Deal to End DHS Shutdown

By Michael Rainey

Happy April Fools' Day! We hope you didn't fall for the report earlier today that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul had imposed a tariff on goods crossing into the Empire State from New Jersey, including the famous red tomatoes that help New Yorkers build top-notch BLTs all summer long. We here at Fiscal Times world headquarters are happy to inform our readers that the story was, in fact, a prank.

In Washington, President Trump made news today by being the first sitting president to attend a Supreme Court hearing - a hearing focused on Trump's effort to restrict birthright citizenship. "We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow 'Birthright' Citizenship!" Trump said inaccurately on his social media platform after leaving the hearing. (More than two dozen countries allow for birthright citizenship.)

Trump has announced that he will address the nation at 9 p.m. ET tonight "to provide an important update on Iran." Rising hopes that the war will end soon have lifted stocks and pushed oil prices lower, with U.S. crude futures contracts falling back below $100 per barrel, though just barely.

Here's your evening update.

Republicans Announce Deal to Fund Homeland Security, End Shutdown

Republican leaders in Congress said Wednesday that they have agreed to move ahead on a Senate bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security, except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. If approved, the legislation would end the current partial government shutdown, now in its 47th day.

House Republicans angrily rejected the bill last week, declaring that they would never support legislation that slights the nation's immigration enforcement agencies. President Trump also spoke out against the bill, saying, "In my opinion, you can't have a bill that's not going to fund ICE."

As an alternative, the House passed a bill that would fund all of DHS for eight weeks, an approach that was all but guaranteed to be rejected by Democrats in the Senate, leaving the two chambers in a stalemate as the shutdown continued.

The newly revived Senate bill would fund most of DHS through September, ICE and CBP excepted. The immigration agencies received extraordinarily high levels of funding in the reconciliation bill Republicans passed last summer and would continue to draw on those funds for the rest of the fiscal year. The bill does not include any reforms or restrictions on ICE and CBP, something Democrats had demanded following violent immigration crackdowns by the Trump administration earlier this year.

Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, could take up the bill as soon as Thursday morning, even though most lawmakers are away during a two-week recess, The New York Times' Carl Hulse reports. Both the House and the Senate have pro forma sessions scheduled on Thursday, and the bill could be approved by voice vote, as long as there are no objections.

"If all goes as planned, the Senate will take up and table an eight-week funding bill for the agency that the House approved last week," Hulse said. "The Senate would then agree to send its bill back to the House, where it could be approved and sent to the president."

A White House official said Trump would sign the bill, despite his previous opposition.

Trump demands funding bill: Earlier Wednesday, Trump called on Republican lawmakers to send him a bill funding immigration enforcement in full by June 1, using an approach "that doesn't need Radical Left Democrat votes."

The budget reconciliation process would allow Republicans to pass a bill in the Senate with a simple majority, denying Democrats the ability to block it.

In a post on his social media platform, Trump said he wants Republicans to move quickly. "We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won't be able to stop us," Trump said.

In a joint statement, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune said they had agreed on "a path forward to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security." Republicans will work on "two parallel tracks," using both the normal appropriations process and a separate reconciliation bill.

"In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited," Johnson and Thune said.

There are no guarantees, of course, that the two-track approach will succeed, and it could take months for the reconciliation process to play out.

In the meantime, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to the news of the deal, saying, "House Republicans caved."

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also noted the Republican change of heart. "Mike Johnson and House Republicans have come to realize that we will never bend the knee," Jeffries said in a statement. "It's time to pay TSA agents, end the airport chaos and fully fund every part of the Department of Homeland Security that does not relate to Donald Trump's violent mass deportation machine."

Number of the Day: $4.1 Billion

Early this evening, NASA launched its first manned rocket to the moon since 1972, with liftoff occurring just after 6:35 p.m. ET. The 10-day Artemis II mission will lift four astronauts into orbit around the moon aboard the Orion spacecraft. NASA says it is testing systems and gaining experience with an eye toward deep space travel in the future.

The Artemis project, which includes the unmanned launch of Artemis I in 2022, has cost about $93 billion from its inception in 2017 through the end of 2025, with each launch costing roughly $4.1 billion, according to a 2021 estimate by NASA's Office of Inspector General.

Future planned Artemis missions include landing on the moon (Artemis IV, scheduled for early 2028) and taking the first steps toward building a permanent lunar base (Artemis V in late 2028).

Americans' Biggest Worry Is Healthcare: Gallup

A new Gallup poll shows that more Americans worry "a great deal" about healthcare than about any other major issue. Given a list of 16 significant policy areas, 61% of respondents chose healthcare as a major concern.

After healthcare, poll respondents said they worry most about four economic topics: the economy overall, inflation, federal spending and the budget deficit, and income and wealth distribution.

"Healthcare's current position represents a return to its prominence in prior decades," Gallup's Lydia Saad said. "It ranked as the top concern from 2015 to 2020, before being displaced during the Biden presidency by other issues, especially the economy and inflation. Before that, from 2002 to 2014, the economy and healthcare had either tied or traded places as the leading concern. While healthcare roughly tied the economy as Americans' top concern in 2025, it now leads by a full 10 points."

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