Graham lifts hold on government funding deal with just hours to shutdown deadline

The Senate on Friday was one step closer to passing a funding package after Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham ended his blockade — although a partial government shutdown was all but certain to happen.

After intense negotiations continued throughout the day, an eleventh-hour deal struck by Senate Democrats and White House, which would see the Department of Homeland Security funding bill separated from a package of five other funding bills, obtained the consent of all 100 senators to advance ahead of Friday night’s deadline.

But it is likely that even if the Senate passes the bills, there will still be at least a short partial shutdown as the legislation would need to go back to the House for reconsideration.

Graham earlier Friday had outlined his demands for lifting his blockade: a promise of a vote at a later date on his bill to end so-called sanctuary cities that resist the administration’s immigration policies, and a vote related to controversial Arctic Frost provisions, which allow members of Congress to sue the government if federal investigators gain access to their phone records without their knowledge. Those provisions were stripped out of the funding package passed by the House.

In a statement Friday afternoon, Graham said Senate Majority Leader John Thune was supportive of his stipulations.

“I will lift my hold and vote for the package,” Graham said.

Thune said the Senate was set to vote on the slate of amendments Friday evening.

Meanwhile, the House is in recess until Monday, and Speaker Mike Johnson told ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang on Thursday night that bringing lawmakers back before then “may not be possible.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the chamber’s top Democrat, earlier Friday would not say whether he supported the spending agreement reached between Senate Democrats and the White House.

“There’s no agreement that’s been before us,” Jeffries said. “Right now, Lindsey Graham apparently is holding up the agreement, threatening to shut down the government, because apparently Senate Republicans still support using taxpayer dollars to brutalize American citizens and on top of it to make matters worse.”

The agreement announced Thursday would see most of the federal government funded through September, while DHS would be funded for two additional weeks at current spending levels to allow lawmakers to negotiate on other provisions in the package. 

The funding fight over DHS erupted in the aftermath of the death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, who was killed in a shooting involving federal law enforcement in Minneapolis over the weekend.

Jeffries insisted Democrats will not back down on their demands for reform at the department, including obtaining judicial warrants — rather than the lower bar of administrative warrants, barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel from wearing masks and mandating that body-worn cameras be turned on, and ending roving raids by ICE. 

“Democrats in the Senate, led by Chuck Schumer, supported by the House, made a clear demand: Separate out the five bills that clearly have bipartisan support, and then separately we can deal with making sure that ICE is brought under control in a variety of different ways, including our demand, which we will not walk away from, which is that judicial warrants should be required before ICE can storm homes and rip people out of their cars,” Jeffries said.