And here we go again. While the funding bills to keep the government open have squeaked by in the House of Representatives, Chuck Schumer has decided that funding the Department of Homeland Security will be the hill Democrats will die on.

First, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is some kind of magician. He keeps managing to pull these narrow votes out of a hat to get these funding bills passed.

A three-bill minibus appropriations package passed the House by a vote of 341-88. The package funds the departments of Defense, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education and other related agencies.

The most contentious measure, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, passed the House by a separate vote of 220-207. Democratic leaders opposed the bill as tensions flared in the wake of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shooting Minneapolis woman Renee Good.

The House will combine the four bills with a two-bill minibus it passed last week and send the full package to the Senate. The upper chamber is expected to take up the bills when it returns from recess next week ahead of a Jan. 30 deadline.

It will mark the first time that new full-year funding levels have been approved for the entire federal government since former President Biden signed an omnibus appropriations bill in March 2024. With Republicans facing limited time to negotiate and design new funding levels after the 2024 election, Congress opted to operate under a full-year continuing resolution (CR) that extended those Biden-era funding levels for the following fiscal year.

The naysayers said it couldn’t be done but they were wrong.

House Republicans just finished passing ALL 12 appropriations bills — restoring regular order, cutting spending, locking in Trump-era priorities, and ending Biden-era budgets. No omnibus. No backroom deals. Just hard… pic.twitter.com/Y3i6iItQSB

— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) January 23, 2026

Speaker Johnson and the House have done their job. The problem now, of course, is that these bills must pass BOTH chambers of Congress. And the Senate Democrats are raring for another fight. Yesterday afternoon, after the news broke about another shooting in Minneapolis, Chuck Schumer announced that he would not support the DHS funding because ICE is doubleplusungood to Democrats right now.

What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling—and unacceptable in any American city. Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to…

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) January 24, 2026

So here we go again.

Schumer’s play call serves as a blow to Senate Republicans, who worked with their colleagues across the aisle to find compromises in the DHS bill, in particular. It also comes as the Jan. 30 deadline to fund the government is rapidly approaching. Further complicating matters is the arctic storm ripping across the country, which has already forced the upper chamber to cancel votes on Monday.

A senior Senate aide told Fox News Digital Senate Democrats had been saying for weeks they weren’t interested in shutting down the government again and had praised the bipartisan nature of the government funding process up until Saturday.

“These bills were negotiated with Dems — they agreed to what’s in them,” the aide said.

The agency would be fully funded in the current proposal with several restrictions and reporting requirements that, if not met, would act as triggers to turn off certain cash flows.

Ripping the bill from the current six-bill funding package would cause a domino effect of headaches in Congress, given that any changes to the package would have to go through the House.

The lower chamber is gone until Feb. 2, making the likelihood of a partial shutdown much higher.

And Senate Republicans will not be able to count on some of those same Democrat crossover votes that ended the shutdown back in November, because they are going to grandstand instead.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, told CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday that he could not support the current, six-bill funding package as is because it included the DHS funding bill. King was a pivotal figure in ending the last shutdown, and was one of only eight Senate Democratic caucus members to join Republicans to end it.

King, like other members of the Senate Democratic caucus, is infuriated by the death of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old nurse who was shot dead by a border patrol agent in Minneapolis on Saturday.

Congressional Democrats have railed against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents entering Minnesota and elsewhere, but begrudgingly agreed to support the DHS bill until the chaos over the weekend unfolded.

“I hate shutdowns,” King said. “I’m one of the people that helped negotiate the solution to the last — the end of the last shutdown, but I can’t vote for a bill that includes ICE funding under the circumstances.”

It also comes on the heels of ICE entering King’s home state of Maine for operation Catch of the Day, where Democratic Gov. Janet Mills is running to beat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in a pivotal Senate race that could determine the balance of power in the upper chamber.

The talking points are going out. In order to keep the government open, Schumer and the Senate Democrats are going to insist that the DHS funding bill be severed off so they can grandstand on that alone, demanding “oversight” and “guardrails.” In other words, they want the immigration enforcement to stop. Not because the optics are bad for the Trump administration – they LOVE the optics and the images that they can spin as they claim kindergarteners are being picked up by ICE. Democrats just don’t want immigration law enforced. That’s the only takeaway from this. They may claim that “they don’t want it enforced like THIS,” but what exactly does that mean? When laws are enforced, people get arrested. Sometimes those people run. Sometimes they resist. And now they have a bunch of LARPing leftists who believe that “real bullets” won’t be used on those who are actively interfering with law enforcement.

The Trump administration needs to be putting up posters and flooding social media with names, faces, and crimes committed by these illegal aliens that ICE is actively pursuing. They need to be asking Senate Democrats why they are okay with child abusers walking freely among the people of Minnesota. They should be offering to drop those they arrest at Governor Walz’s or Mayor Frey’s homes and making sure they get inside for safety, since they insist these people are their “neighbors” and it’s very cold in Minneapolis right now. They should be asking how many of these people Chuck Schumer is willing to host at his house. We are witnessing the consequences of unfettered immigration and an open border, and Democrats – who encouraged both of those things – are now demanding that the law not be enforced because they don’t like it. But, they kept insisting that no one was above the law… right?

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click