Could the long national nightmare be coming to an end?
As we’ve reported extensively, the Democrats in Congress have been throwing a months-long temper tantrum and have refused to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security unless the GOP bends its knee to their extreme demands to reform U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Their juvenile behavior has led to the ongoing partial government shutdown, which has now been going on for over 75 days.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and his Republican lawmakers may have just found a way out of it, however, and we could see some of this failure theater nuked in the near future.
That being said, the measure passed by the House on Thursday still doesn’t immediately solve the problem of funding ICE and Border Patrol:
BREAKING: The House just passed the Senate DHS funding bill (funds all of DHS except ICE & CBP) via voice vote. There was no roll call vote requested. It now goes to President Trump's desk for signature. Democrats had been demanding this for weeks.
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) April 30, 2026
Coast Guard, FEMA, Secret…
BREAKING: The House just passed the Senate DHS funding bill (funds all of DHS except ICE & CBP) via voice vote. There was no roll call vote requested. It now goes to President Trump's desk for signature. Democrats had been demanding this for weeks.
Coast Guard, FEMA, Secret Service, CISA etc funding all included, but again, ICE and CBP are not.
ICE and CBP will have to wait until Republicans can pass a second reconciliation bill without any Democratic votes in the Senate.
There has been endless jockeying and back-and-forth negotiations to get to this point. Remember the old saying: “Laws are like sausages — it’s better not to see them being made.”
Congress took a major step toward ending the record-breaking Department of Homeland Security shutdown on Thursday as the White House warned hundreds of thousands of federal employees were on the verge of missing paychecks amid the 75-day funding lapse.
The House of Representatives unanimously approved a Senate-passed spending measure covering most of the department’s appropriations through September.
The vote came after the DHS funding measure had stalled in the lower chamber for more than a month as House Speaker Mike Johnson declined to put the bill on the floor over objections to language he said defunded law enforcement. The speaker's opposition reflected the views of many in his conference, who viewed the bill as a dead letter when the Senate passed it unanimously in March.
None of this means that the GOP has given up on fully funding ICE and CBP, though; it's a step along the way of what they hope will be a successful effort to solve things altogether with the reconciliation process, which would allow them to get things done without any Democrat votes. In another vote on Thursday, the Republicans pushed forward with that effort:
NEW: House Republicans just cleared a key first hurdle to move ICE and Border Patrol funding forward without Democratic votes.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 30, 2026
The chamber passed a budget framework 215-211 along party lines, setting up the reconciliation process for a later bill that aims to provide about $70… pic.twitter.com/30pgS7Yow2
NEW: House Republicans just cleared a key first hurdle to move ICE and Border Patrol funding forward without Democratic votes.
The chamber passed a budget framework 215-211 along party lines, setting up the reconciliation process for a later bill that aims to provide about $70 billion for the agencies.
It does not fund the agencies yet — more House and Senate votes still have to happen before anything becomes law.
Although these maneuvers won't solve everything immediately, they would stave off a looming issue: the White House had warned that the government would not be able to pay hundreds of thousands of federal employees beginning in May as funds were drying up due to the partial shutdown. The Democrats could just put an end to this circus and fully fund DHS, which is crucial in this era of increased political violence, but they just want to play their silly games and work against what a majority of Americans voted for.
This is far from over, but today’s votes are at least progress.
Editor’s Note: Democrats continue to put our nation's national security at risk simply because they want to keep illegal aliens from being deported.
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