Hill GOP braces for ‘nightmare week’ as pressure mounts to end DHS funding standoff

By Sarah Ferris, Lauren Fox, CNN

(CNN) — Top Republicans on Capitol Hill have spent 10 weeks struggling to end the bitter stalemate over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Now, as federal workers — including US Secret Service agents who protected the president in this weekend’s shooting in Washington — prepare to miss a paycheck, GOP leaders are under more pressure than ever before to resolve the standoff.

Congressional Republicans return to DC Monday evening with a slew of contentious votes ahead that have fiercely divided the party, including the critical DHS funding measure. But there are other must-pass bills that still don’t have the votes to pass in the narrowly divided House, according to GOP leadership aides, including a bill overseeing the government’s spy powers that conservative privacy hawks detest and a massive farm bill that’s angered the MAHA bloc of the GOP.

“We’ve got a nightmare week,” one GOP leadership aide told CNN.

Perhaps most difficult for Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune will be ending the 72-day shutdown of DHS, which has thrown into question pay for thousands of federal workers, including the agent who took a bullet to the vest at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this weekend. DHS has so far paid staff out of a previously approved $10 billion rainy day fund – but that money will be depleted soon, aides have warned. The expectation is that staffers would receive only one more paycheck from that fund before it runs out.

“We have to move DHS funding because it’s urgent. As the secretary of Homeland Security has said. We are out of money. He is out of money at the end of this week. Democrats have been playing games with this. It’s very dangerous as demonstrated Saturday night. We got to get the job done,” Johnson said Monday when asked if he would move on that funding this week.

Resolving the DHS funding crisis was already a nearly impossible task for Johnson and the fractious House GOP. The party is in a bitter feud over how to reopen DHS, with conservatives enraged that Thune decided to bow to Democratic demands to only partially fund the department – without money for immigration enforcement. It has set off a frantic scramble to pass a separate – and legislatively complex – package of only federal immigration enforcement and border patrol funding, though that has been bogged down by other hardliner demands.

Saturday’s gunfire at one of Washington’s most high-profile annual events has further complicated talks, with some of those hardliner Republicans, like Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, demanding that the party set aside funding for a “secure ballroom” on White House grounds for the president to safely hold events. (Many of them already had major demands for the DHS vote, including tying the measure to Trump’s federal elections overhaul bill, as well as a promise for an ambitious domestic policy push sometime before the midterms.)

The DHS shutdown – already the longest in history – is now threatening to have dire consequences for officials charged with protecting US borders.

One Republican member who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing conversations with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told CNN that there are concerns at the agency that there could be “serious consequences” if the House doesn’t move DHS funding soon.

Mullin himself has used his many TV appearances in recent weeks to warn that the money is running dry.

While headline-making airport lines have abated after Trump unilaterally moved to pay Transportation Security Administration workers, other areas overseen by DHS like the Coast Guard are running up against the constraints of existing funding streams.

“You have agencies that are not TSA and not getting paid like (the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency). And the Coast Guard is running out of options,” the member said. “Cyber security is a big deal. And you cannot hire any staff and you aren’t able to give them any guarantees. They are going to start leaving the agency.”

Other brewing battles

GOP leaders must also figure out how to defuse a legislative landmine that’s already led to two failed votes on the House floor: renewing a government spy authority that’s critical to US surveillance overseas.

That tool, which is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is contentious among the many Hill Republicans who are distrustful of the government’s ability to spy on its citizens without a warrant.

House GOP leadership believed as of Friday that enough conservatives would accept their latest FISA proposal and longer-term funding could finally pass the chamber, sending it to the Senate. But one conservative who attended a meeting with Johnson late last week told CNN they were still skeptical of leadership’s proposal.

National security hawks in Johnson’s ranks are also increasingly uneasy about empowering GOP hardliners to tackle major changes to FISA.

It remains unclear whether the speaker’s latest proposal will satisfy his right flank given the changes do little to address the warrant concerns. If Johnson can’t win the approval from his own party, he may need to turn to Democrats.

Lawmakers and senior aides have acknowledged that Johnson could much more easily put together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats rather than try to satisfy every Republican in his conference.

That would require cooperation from Democratics leaders, either by helping the GOP get through a procedural hurdle known as a rule vote, or by helping to deliver a wide swath of votes in what’s known as a “suspension vote,” which is typically reserved for noncontroversial bills and requires two-thirds support in the House.

It’s a familiar conundrum for Johnson as he navigates one of the slimmest House margins in history: Work with Democrats to move must-pass bills or find a way to satiate conservatives without losing moderate support.

“I gotta suspect they are gonna have a rules issue and then maybe only then when they faceplant a second time, will they decide it’s time to work with Democrats,” Democratic Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut said, referring to that procedural vote that must pass before the measure can be taken up by the full House.

Meanwhile, there is growing animosity from rank-and-file Republicans that a handful of conservatives are dictating the process – on both FISA and the DHS shutdown – and dragging it out.

“Let’s stop doing the pretzel twister game with Republicans who never want to get to yes anyway,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska told CNN. “We are trying to accommodate 20 people. This is what is broken about Congress. These guys want to rule with just 218 and that gives power to 20 or 10 depending on the issue and that just ain’t right.”

But it’s not just Bacon – and it’s not just about FISA.

On Friday, before the shooting, Bacon and a handful of other Republicans from swing districts sent a letter to leadership urging Johnson to bring the DHS funding bill that includes everything but immigration enforcement funding to the floor for a vote.

The Senate passed it twice already but it has languished in the House as Johnson has had to contend with conservatives who argue they don’t want to vote for anything that zeroes out funding for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection. But while the House also holds the Senate-passed budget proposal that begins the process of funding those immigration enforcement agencies, it may not be enough for conservatives who want to include additional items like the SAVE Act and deficit reduction, which could further drag out the process.

Johnson is also facing pressure from conservatives to include additional items in the legislation, since many view it as perhaps the last opportunity to push their own priorities before the midterms even as leadership has kept the door open to moving yet another party-line reconciliation bill down the line.

Many in GOP leadership, however, are skeptical that another massive policy bill can pass Congress before the midterms, multiple sources have told CNN.

And some hardline conservatives don’t believe GOP leaders will adequately try to push it through. They believe Johnson’s promises for a so-called “Reconciliation 3.0” bill are disingenuous and may threaten to hold up the DHS funding bill this week unless they can extract some more assurances.

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CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed to this report.