(The Center Square) – After two weeks of recess, Congress returns Monday facing a still-shuttered Homeland Security department and a massive legislative to-do list.
By Monday, the Department of Homeland Security will have operated 55 days without core funding – the longest government shutdown by far in U.S. history.
Democrats are demanding that any annual Homeland Security appropriations bill – which funds ICE, Border Patrol, TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and other agencies – include a laundry list of restrictions on immigration enforcement.
After weeks of failed negotiations, Republican leaders have determined the only way to reopen DHS without folding to Democrats’ demands is to strip ICE and CBP funding from the Homeland Security bill.
Such legislation has already passed the Senate and only needs the House’s approval to reach the president’s desk.
Republicans then plan to use a party-line budget reconciliation bill to shower the immigration enforcement agencies with cash, not only for the current fiscal year but for years ahead.
Unlike other struggling DHS agencies, ICE and CBP have remained unaffected by the shutdown of DHS. Republicans’ previous reconciliation bill, the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” gave each agency an over $70 billion funding boost, separate from their annual appropriations money that Republicans are trying to push through.
Using budget reconciliation as a vehicle to provide annual appropriations funding is an unconventional and risky maneuver.
President Donald Trump wants the legislation on his desk by June 1, and Republicans will need to craft and pass a budget resolution – the blueprint for the reconciliation bill – before they can pass the bill itself.
Senate Republican leaders are huddling over the weekend and could drop the text of the budget resolution as soon as next week.
Besides passing the hybrid Homeland Security bill to end the DHS shutdown and ensure that it is funded for the rest of fiscal year 2026, House lawmakers are jumping into fiscal year 2027 funding negotiations.
Less than six months before the next fiscal year begins and federal agencies need a funding refresh, the White House sent Congress its $2.1 trillion budget request.
Lawmakers will use it as a general starting point for negotiations, though they almost always make significant changes. The House Budget Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday to consider the president’s proposal.
The House Appropriations Committees, meanwhile, will hold around a dozen hearings throughout next week to hear input from federal agencies themselves.
Officials from the U.S. departments of Energy, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security are all scheduled to appear before the committee and present their own budget requests.
While these hearings occur, House and Senate Democratic leaders plan to again force votes on resolutions that would halt the Trump administration’s ongoing military activities in Iran, which Congress never authorized.
Republicans in both the House and Senate already voted down separate War Powers Resolutions in early March.
Democrats, however, are hoping that the drawn-out conflict's impacts on gas prices and the stock market will ultimately persuade enough Republicans at this point to join them in curbing Trump’s power.
Congress must also renew a powerful surveillance tool of the National Security Agency that expires April 20.
But lawmakers across the political spectrum are fiercely divided over whether they should reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to better protect American privacy rights.
On paper, FISA Section 702 allows federal intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on foreign nationals of suspicion.
In practice, however, the electronic data of American citizens – including emails, text messages, and phone calls – are routinely collected as well.
Not only can intelligence agencies store that data for up to five years, but intelligence agents can and do routinely search that data without obtaining a warrant, known as “backdoor searches.”
Some lawmakers, particularly Republicans, are concerned this violates Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.
House Republican leadership, however, has already planned a vote Wednesday to extend Section 702 without implementing any reforms or privacy protections.
Republicans are also fighting for passage of their voter-ID bill in the Senate, which will resume its marathon debate on the legislation dubbed the SAVE America Act.
The most avid supporters of the House-passed legislation – which among other things would require Americans to present proof of citizenship in person when registering to vote – argue that the bill is crucial for congressional Republicans to maintain their majority in the midterm elections.
Though Trump has urged Republican Senate leaders to abolish the filibuster so that the bill can pass with only a majority vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., says there isn’t enough support in the caucus for such a drastic action.
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