Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said at the premiere of “Melania” that he is not confident that a government shutdown will be avoided, even though the Senate agreed to a deal Jan. 29 that would fund parts of the government.
The deal strips a Department of Homeland funding bill from the funding package and replaces it with a two-week continuing resolution to allow for negotiations for reforms to the agency. It is unclear when the revised funding package will be sent back to the lower chamber.
“The Senate is doing their thing tonight and I’ve got to make some tough decisions later this evening on how soon we can get House members back,” Johnson said on the red carpet at the Trump Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
Johnson pointed to 72-hour return notice for members in the chamber’s rules in an interview with USA TODAY at the premiere. “Logistics are a challenge,” he said, adding that he “thinks” the earliest the House could take action on the deal is Monday, Feb. 2, and that the country will “inevitably” be in a short shutdown.
“I wanted the Senate to pass the 12 appropriations bills that we sent over, the House did its job,” Johnson said. “But we’ll deal with it as it develops.”
The deal represented a big win for Democrats, who’ve been uniformly pushing for widespread reforms to President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign in the wake of the killing of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, by Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis. It was the second fatal shooting by federal agents in the Twin Cities this month. On Jan. 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old poet.
When asked about potential reforms to ICE and DHS, Johnson pointed to the executive branch and said “you’ve got to have the feds get participation from local and state officials.”
“That is not what we’ve had from the state of Minnesota and the results of that have been tragic,” Johnson said.
President Donald Trump whipped for the deal in a Truth Social post made shortly after it was announced, saying he wanted to see “a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote.”