Senate Republicans are moving forward with a huge funding package in their bid to keep the government open and hope to blow away Democratic opposition in the process.
Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, on Monday completed the first procedural step on the six-bill funding package that includes the politically divisive Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending bill, despite warnings from Senate Democrats that they would block the legislation.
Monday’s action is just the first of several hurdles lawmakers will have to overcome, but significant ones nonetheless, given the extreme weather that has rocked much of the country and threatened to delay the process entirely.
Senate Democrats threaten shutdown by blocking DHS funding after Minnesota ice attacks
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, RS.D., slammed demands by Senate Democrats that Republicans pull the DHS funding bill out of a colossal funding package, moving forward with a procedural move to hold the legislation up for a vote later this week.
(Getty Images)
The bet by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, RS.D., comes as a Friday government funding deadline affects the Senate. Passing the package and sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk would fully fund the government until September, when lawmakers will again need to pass a dozen spending bills to keep the lights on.
But the immediate fight, and one that threatens to derail the GOP plan to avoid yet another shutdown, is over DHS funding.
Read on the Fox News app
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his group have come out en masse against the broader package, including the Homeland Funding bill, in the wake of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, 37, by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Schumer and Senate Democrats quickly mobilized their opposition to the funding bill despite maintaining a fragile truce with the GOP in their bipartisan government funding negotiations over the past two days.
Key senator won’t fund DH as ice, federal agents enter his state
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., leaves after a vote at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 7, 2026.
Despite holding a largely united front, including several moderate Senate Democrats who crossed the aisle to help Republicans reopen the government last year, Schumer has one perennial defector.
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has consistently opposed any attempt to shut down the government. He notably joined Senate Republicans more than a dozen times last year to reopen the government while his colleagues resisted.
And like those times before, Fetterman is not eager to shut down the federal government, despite agreeing with Senate Democrats that the DHS bill should be carved out of the broader package.
He noted in a statement that even a government shutdown would affect funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), given that the GOP’s colossal, “one big, beautiful bill” injected more than $170 billion over the next few years into DHS.
Senate lawmakers revolt against DHS funding bill amid Minneapolis chaos, expressing risk of government shutdown
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has rallied behind a plan to strip the DHS funding bill from a broader spending package, but Republicans aren’t biting.
“I reject calls to defund or disband ICE. I strongly disagree with many of the strategies and practices implemented by ICE in Minneapolis and believe they need to change,” Fetterman said. “I want a conversation about the DHS appropriations bill and I support getting it out of the van.”
“This is unlikely to happen, and our country will suffer another shutdown,” he continued. “We have to find a way forward and I remain determined to be a voice of reason and common sense.”
Click here to download the Fox News app
Fetterman and his colleagues want the DHS bill removed from the larger package and say they would support the remaining five bills. But that would open up a procedural nightmare in the process and likely lead to a partial government shutdown, given that the House would have to return from a weeklong recess to intervene.
And as the latest foray into a possible shutdown, Schumer argued that the onus is on Thune and Senate Republicans, despite the fact that Senate Democrats negotiated the current funding package on a bipartisan basis.
“The responsibility to prevent a partial government shutdown rests with Leader Thune and Senate Republicans,” Schumer said in a statement. “If Leader Thune puts the five bills down this week, we can pass them right away. If not, Republicans will once again be responsible for another government shutdown.”
Source of the original article: Thune reins in Dems’ DHS revolt as Fetterman defect, Schumer under pressure