Trump rejects off-ramp to fund DHS as airport delays worsen

WASHINGTON – On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, RS.D., negotiated with President Donald Trump to reopen the TSA and eliminate long lines and delays at airports.

It would fund the entire Department of Homeland Security except ICE, which Democrats have refused to support without new restrictions on immigration enforcement, two sources with knowledge of the discussion told NBC News.

White House aides first pitched the idea to Trump and, after the briefing, Thune spoke to the president, the two sources said. Thune discussed the idea with Republicans on Capitol Hill, one of the sources said. A second source said it is seen by many Republicans as an effective way to break the logjam.

ICE would be separately funded by Republicans in a cross-party “reconciliation” bill that could pass without the need for any Democratic support later in the year.

DHS has been shut down for more than a month, and while important jobs, like TSA and FEMA, are still working, most of those workers are working without pay. As NBC News reported this weekend, more than 400 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began. ICE is also closed, but its employees are paid through the fine Trump bill passed last year.

Republicans believe Trump and Thune’s talks will win the support of Democrats, who have pledged to fund controversial parts of DHS on the Senate floor while the two parties continue to negotiate on immigration.

But Trump rejected it — as he made clear in a Truth Social post Sunday night.

“I don’t think we should make a deal with Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, until, they vote with Republicans to pass the ‘SAVE AMERICA ACT,'” Trump wrote, while instead calling on Republicans to “Kill the Filibuster, and stay in DC for Easter, if necessary.”

Trump’s first two ideas don’t work. Democrats are determined to sink the SAVE America Act, which does not have enough support to pass. And Republicans have made it clear they don’t have the votes to filibuster. However, they may cancel the break if there is no agreement by the end of this week.

The interview with Thune and Trump was first reported by Punchbowl News.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office said Democrats will seek unanimous approval to support the TSA on the Senate floor on Monday, the eighth time.

Republicans have so far rejected such independent bills.

If Trump can change his mind and embrace the Thune-GOP vision, it brings benefits to both parties. For Republicans, they would avoid giving in to Democratic demands, such as requiring immigration officials to remove their masks and requiring judicial warrants for raids. For Democrats, they can keep their fingerprints off ICE funding, which has become poison in their ranks since the DHS killings of protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

“We can get out of this shutdown at the end of the week,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Sunday. “Here’s what we’re doing. Democrats can open up everything at DHS but ICE. We have to accept that. The next day, we have to send a reconciliation budget resolution that funds ICE as we see fit. We don’t need Democratic votes to do that.”

Democrats also plan to seize on Trump’s social media posts to argue that he owns the shutdown and travel chaos.

Reconciliation bills are difficult, requiring unanimous support among Republicans, especially given the House majority. There were serious doubts that this team could pull it off, even if they tried. But needing to subsidize an agency like ICE will increase the pressure to use that approach.

Under the “big, good bill” passed by Republicans last year, ICE received an infusion of about $75 billion over the next four years to help carry out Trump’s mass deportation plan.

The approach comes with another possibility for the White House: some Trump allies have proposed reconciliation to authorize funding for Trump’s war on Iran. It’s not clear that would garner enough support from the Democratic Alliance.