Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told House Republicans he wants to utilize a special fast-track process that will require cooperation from Democrats to swiftly pass the funding package that the Senate is poised to send over and end what lawmakers hope will be a brief government shutdown.
Johnson told Republicans about his desired play call on a Friday late afternoon conference call, two GOP sources told The Hill.
The process, called suspension of the rules, will bypass the immense difficulty of getting unified Republican support for a regular procedural rule — votes that have given GOP leaders regular headaches as Republican rebels make last-minute demands and leverage the razor-thin House majority.
But the suspension process requires a two-thirds majority for success, meaning he will need support from more than 70 Democrats.
The Senate is expected to pass the revamped funding package on Friday night. It includes five full-year funding bills and a stopgap measure funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for two weeks while negotiators hash out Democratic demands for reforms to immigration enforcement.
But because government funding runs out at midnight and the House still needs to approve the package, there will be at least a short funding lapse for large portions of the federal government.
Johnson said he hopes to pass the package in the House on Monday.
Senate Democrats, enraged by Border Patrol agents killing Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti last weekend, said they would not vote to fund DHS without reforms. They brokered a deal for the DHS two-week continuing resolution plus five-bill minibus with the White House, giving time to negotiate on their demands.
Before the House GOP conference call on Friday, GOP leaders appeared to be moving to approve the package under a regular rule process, with two GOP sources telling The Hill that the House Rules Committee was expected to meet on Sunday afternoon to tee up a rule for the funding package. Going through that process and approving a procedural rule on party lines, though, would be a huge lift for Johnson.
GOP leaders had to wrangle a handful of GOP holdouts on the close rule vote to approve the original six-bill funding package last week. And the House GOP majority margin will only get tighter after an incoming Democrat is sworn in after a Texas special election runoff for a Houston-area seat on Saturday. Republicans will be able to afford no more than one Republican defection on any party-line vote, assuming all members are present and voting.
But moving to rely on Democrats creates more unknowns for Johnson — namely, whether enough Democrats will support passing the funding package on suspension.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) earlier on Friday expressed approval for passing a five-bill minibus as-is, while saying House Democrats will “evaluate” whether there is “a real path toward making dramatic changes at the Department of Homeland Security necessary to stop the use of taxpayer dollars from brutalizing everyday Americans.”
Jeffries reiterated that Democrats want to see specific policies like tightening rules governing the use of warrants by officers targeting migrants.
Progressive Democrats have already started to voice opposition to the DHS stopgap measure.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a post on X Friday that “my Progressive Caucus colleagues and I have been clear: not another cent to ICE until we stop the chaos and the lawlessness.”
“If this comes to the House, I’m voting no,” he said, in response to the news that President Trump and Senate Democrats had struck a funding deal.
Trump’s support for the deal will be key in helping Johnson get the package through the House with minimal uproar from the GOP’s right flank.
But Johnson is already getting backlash from some conservatives, who have been skeptical of the Senate deal and have pushed for certain demands to be included in the bills.
The first public backlash came from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who has demanded legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections — either the SAVE Act or the SAVE America Act, a new version sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — be attached to final DHS funding.
“To be clear, they are trying to change how legislation is passed because they know that this legislation, ‘as is,’ would fail. So they are then going to open it up to all Democrats. They need 2/3 of a supermajority of the House to pass it,” Luna wrote on the social platform X as the call ended.
“STOP BEING WEAKLINGS! EITHER YOU INCLUDE VOTER ID ON THE RULE GOING TO THE SENATE OR I AM A NO ON RULES,” she added.
Earlier on Friday, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) — a Freedom Caucus member who is often a holdout on GOP legislation — had expressed frustration with a two-week stopgap measure that would fund the Department of Homeland Security at existing levels.
Norman said that all Democrats “want to do is grandstand on how bad ICE is and how bad Kristi Noem is. I completely reject that. And why would we give them two weeks to negotiate? I mean, what is there to negotiate?…I’m fed up with the Senate not having the backbone to stand up and say, ‘Look, we’re not going to play ping pong, this back and forth.’”