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The race to avoid another shutdown: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, our Capitol Hill team reports on the negotiations between President Donald Trump and Senate Democrats to avert a government shutdown. Plus, Jonathan Allen dives into White House border czar Tom Homan’s arrival in Minneapolis.

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— Adam Wollner

Trump says he and Democrats are 'getting close' to a deal to resolve shutdown fight

By Scott Wong, Sahil Kapur, Ryan Nobles and Frank Thorp V

President Donald Trump and Senate Democrats are closing in on a deal to avert a shutdown of most of the government Saturday, seeking to de-escalate a bitter fight over the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement that reached a boiling point after the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

“Hopefully, we won’t have a shutdown. We’re working on that right now. I think we’re getting close. The Democrats, I don’t believe, want to see it either,” Trump said during his first Cabinet meeting of the new year. “So we’ll work in a very bipartisan way, I believe, not to have a shutdown. We don’t want to shut down.”

The emerging deal reflects what senators in both parties had floated a day earlier: passing a short-term funding bill for DHS, while the two parties negotiate changes to the department, along with bills to fund the rest of the government through Sept. 30.

The two sides are still negotiating how long the stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, would fund DHS, with Democrats preferring something very short.

This afternoon, the Senate rejected a sweeping $1.2 trillion funding package that the House passed last week; that legislation bundled all six funding bills together, including funding for DHS. The Senate vote was 45-55, with eight Republicans joining all Democrats in voting no — far short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a filibuster.

The Republicans who voted against the measure were Sens. Ted Budd, R-N.C.; Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; Mike Lee, R-Utah; Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Ashley Moody, R-Fla.; Rick Scott, R-Fla.; and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. For procedural reasons, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., switched his vote to “no.”

The failed vote on the House package was expected, as Democrats had warned they would not support it without significant safeguards related to DHS and ICE operations. But the degree of GOP opposition to the existing package highlights the leverage Democrats have in securing an agreement.

“This is a moment of truth for the United States of America. What the nation witnessed on Saturday in the streets of Minneapolis was a moral abomination,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “What ICE is doing, outside the law, is state-sanctioned thuggery, and it must stop. ... And Congress has the authority and the moral obligation to act.”

Thune, meanwhile, is deferring to the White House to cut a deal, telling reporters: “My hope and expectation is that, yeah, as the White House and Senate Dems, they work this out, that they’ll be able to produce the votes that are necessary to get it passed.”

Read more →

Tom Homan brings a new approach, at least rhetorically, to Minneapolis

Analysis by Jonathan Allen

The new face of the White House’s mass deportation campaign brought a much different tone in his first public remarks since arriving in a riven Minneapolis earlier this week.

Gone was Greg Bovino, the ultra-combative border patrolman with the unique title of commander-at-large. He had demanded attention by getting into altercations with protesters, wearing a long jacket and chemical spray canisters, and urging his subordinates to use aggressive tactics against targets and protesters with the memorable phrase — perhaps borrowed from “Top Gun” — “turn and burn.”

In his place is Tom Homan, the White House border czar, a career immigration enforcement official once praised by President Barack Obama and later appointed to positions in both Trump administrations.

Homan wore a suit and tie to his news conference this morning. He said he had productive meetings with Democratic officials in Minnesota, including Attorney General Keith Ellison, a former leader of the House’s progressive caucus. He laid out a path for restoring calm and drawing down the federal presence.

As he asked for greater cooperation from elected officials in the state, he stopped to acknowledge that Minnesota already turns over undocumented detainees in state jails to ICE — a talking point of Gov. Tim Walz. And he articulated a sentiment that has been absent from the rhetoric of other high-ranking administration officials: law enforcement officers, protesters and undocumented immigrants should be free from the fear of fatal violence.

“I don’t want to see anybody die, even the people we’re looking for,” Homan said. “I say a prayer every night that everybody was home safe.”

It remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump’s pivot in Minneapolis — spurred by the killing of Alex Pretti on Saturday and the disintegration of the White House narrative that Pretti intended to “assassinate” the agents who shot him — will include changes in tactics on the ground or simply rhetoric from behind a lectern.

But words can matter a lot. Homan is unlikely to tell ICE and Border Patrol agents that they have full immunity, as Vice President JD Vance and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller did. Instead, his message is one of restraint — on all sides — and it comes on the heels of Trump saying that he wants to “de-escalate” in Minneapolis. That may filter down the ranks the same way the combative words of Bovino, Vance and Miller appeared to.

Trump’s deployment of Homan was met by skepticism from the left and frustration from the right. The left doesn’t believe his presence will stop federal officers from using force against protesters, children as “bait” and the law to target undocumented immigrants who aren’t threats to the community — those who have committed no further crime than coming to the U.S. illegally or overstaying their right to be here.

On the right, Bovino achieved folk-hero status as the most fearsome weapon in Trump’s national campaign to deport millions of immigrants — the operations he promised to carry out as a candidate in 2024.

The disappointment speaks to the challenges facing Homan and the fear — on the extreme ends of the political spectrum, where activists are deeply invested in the immigration fight — that he might just live up to his implicit promise: that he can depart Minneapolis with criminals in hand and calm in the streets.

🗞️ Today's other top stories

➡️ Omar attack fallout: The Justice Department filed charges against a man who allegedly tried to spray Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., with a substance from a syringe during a town hall in Minneapolis this week. Read more →
🗳️ Jumping in: Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar announced she is running for governor of Minnesota. She’s aiming to succeed Walz, who said on MS NOW that he would never run for elected office again.
👀 2028 watch: Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro said that in his view, Vance has “offered comfort” to people on the right who espouse anti-Jewish views, as the Republican Party navigates an ongoing intra-coalition feud over antisemitism. Read more →
🎥 On the big screen: Melania Trump’s documentary, “Melania: Twenty Days to History,” is getting a lavish Washington, D.C., premiere at the Kennedy Center today before rolling out on more than 1,500 screens in the U.S. and Canada this weekend. Read more →