Senate Democrats and White House Reach Deal to Avoid Shutdown

Published Jan. 29, 2026

Updated Jan. 30, 2026, 9:26 p.m. ET

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, and Democrats reached a spending deal Thursday evening with the White House and Republicans to keep the government funded. President Trump endorsed the deal with a message on social media.

What We’re Covering Today

• Shutdown Talks: Senate Democrats have struck a deal with Republicans and the White House to pass five spending bills to fund a large portion of the government for the remainder of the fiscal year, as well as a stopgap measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks while they continue negotiating guardrails to rein in immigration agents. It is unclear how quickly the House can and will process those funding bills after the Senate passes them. Read more ›
• ‘Melania’ Premiere: Mr. Trump is attending a screening of “Melania” at the Kennedy Center Thursday evening. The film follows his wife, Melania Trump, in the days leading up to his second inauguration. Amazon paid Ms. Trump’s production company $40 million for the film rights and is backing it with a $35 million marketing campaign. Read more ›
• Cabinet Meeting: Mr. Trump held his first cabinet meeting of the year, a more streamlined affair than past gatherings that he said had been “boring.” While a number of top advisers hailed administration policies on taxes and tariffs, some notable members of his cabinet did not speak at all, including Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who has faced intense scrutiny over the immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Read more ›

Shutdown Talks

Jan. 29, 2026, 6:24 p.m. ET

Jan. 29, 2026


Chris Cameron

Reporting from Washington

President Trump endorsed a spending deal between Senate Democrats and Republicans that would stave off a government shutdown while lawmakers continue negotiating guardrails to rein in immigration agents.

“Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan “YES” Vote,” Trump wrote on social media.

Source

Johnson: We're not paying for healthcare for illegals

Chuck Schumer: The Intelligence Community has Six Ways from Sunday of Getting Back at You

Schumer gives congressional delegation update

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Temper Tantrump: Government Shuts Down After President Reneges On Deal

 

The Washington Post/The Washington Post

By Lisa Mascaro, MATTHEW DALY and Zeke Miller
December 22, 2018 6:02 am



WASHINGTON (AP) — A partial federal shutdown took hold early Saturday after President Donald Trump suddenly revived this week his demands for $5 billion to start erecting his cherished Mexican border wall, a chaotic postscript for Republicans in the waning days of their two-year reign controlling government.

Vice President Mike Pence, Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney left the Capitol late Friday after hours of bargaining with congressional leaders produced no apparent compromise. “We don’t have a deal. We’re still talking,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told reporters.

Late Friday, Mulvaney sent agency heads a memorandum telling them to “execute plans for an orderly shutdown.” He wrote that administration officials were “hopeful that this lapse in appropriations will be of short duration” — an expectation that was widely shared.

With negotiations expected to continue, the House and Senate both scheduled rare Saturday sessions. House members were told they’d get 24 hours’ notice before a vote.

The gridlock blocks money for nine of 15 Cabinet-level departments and dozens of agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, Interior, Agriculture, State and Justice.

Those being furloughed include nearly everyone at NASA and 52,000 workers at the Internal Revenue Service. About 8 in 10 employees of the National Park Service will stay home and many parks were expected to close.

The Senate passed legislation ensuring workers will receive back pay, which the House seemed sure to approve.

Some agencies, including the Pentagon and the departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services, were already funded for the year in agreements reached earlier, and they will operate as usual. 

Google To Preserve Stonewall Stories

The World According to Charles 'Chuck' Schumer

Is it just my imagination, or is Charles Schumer consistently advocating for some new frivolous legislation? It seems to me that just about every week the Democratic Senator from New York is in the news headlines trying to pass a new law.

Why does Senator Chuck Schumer have so much to say?

Why does have such a keen insight in to what society needs?

Is the government involvement in every aspect of life Sen. Schumer's solution to everything?

Now he's worrying about superPAC(s) political contributions (CASH FOR CLUNKERS).

Arsenio.

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Schumer, a king of Democratic fund-raising, says Wall Street is now giving him 'very little' money

Chuck Schumer, with Kirsten Gillibrand. Azi Paybarah, via flickr

• 

BY REID PILLIFANT

10:45 am Feb. 2, 2012

Appearing on "Morning Joe" today for what was supposed to have been an attack on super PACs, Senator Charles Schumer found himself defending his own contributions from Wall Street, saying it wasn't fair to compare his fund-raising to the new unregulated system, and that the financial-services sector isn't giving him much these days anyway.

Host Joe Scarborough said that "everybody I know...laughed" yesterday, when Schumer convened a press conference to announce that he would hold hearings on super PACs as chairman of the Rules Committee.

Scarborough praised Schumer for being able to "shake money out of the pants of Wall Street guys," but wondered if he was "really the best person to come forward and decry the powerful interests of corporate money."

"Number one, it's not corporate money, that can't be given to an individual," Schumer said. "Second, and most importantly, it's disclosed and disclosed immediately and there are limited amounts: $5,000 per individual.

"This is not millions of dollars, anonymously given, and running huge kinds of negative ads. When you have a small number of very wealthy people able to control the process, as they have been, anonymously, it's corrosive to democracy."

One of the problems facing Democrats who argued against the new rules is that they've been using super PACs too. Mika Brezinzski asked if Majority Leader Harry Reid should revoke the email he sent soliciting donations for the Senate Democrats' own super PAC (called simply "Majority PAC").

"Look, the vast majority of this is, when you look at the numbers, on the Republican side, because they have most of the wealthy wealthy donors," Schumer replied.

"No we don't!" interrupted Scarborough, who served as a Republican congressman from Florida in the 1990s. "No we don't! You've got all the rich guys on Wall Street who have supported Democrats for years, senator!"

"No, no, look at where Wall Street is giving," Schumer said. "They're giving overwhelmingly to Republicans now because people like myself have passed the Dodd-Frank Bill which they don't like."

Scarborough wasn't buying it.

"So they're not giving you money anymore?" he asked.

"No. Very little, frankly," Schumer said.

"To you?"

"To me," Schumer said. "That's correct. Because they didn't like the Dodd-Frank Bill, which I think is balanced reform and fair reform. And they don't like the idea of saying millionaires should pay a 30 percent tax."

According to Open Secrets, the securities and investments industry has, as Schumer says, preferred Republicans so far this cycle, giving $14.6 million to Republicans and $9.5 million to Democrats. But in the Senate, Democrats have received $3.5 million to Republicans' $2.4 million.

Whether Schumer's own fund-raising has slowed down is difficult to judge, since he was re-elected over token opposition in November of 2010, just four months after Dodd-Frank passed the Senate, and hasn't bothered to start raising in earnest for his next election in 2016.

But he vastly outraised his colleagues leading up to 2010, collecting $2.7 million from the securities and investment industry, or about twice as much as the next closest candidate, who happened to be New York's junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand.

If Wall Street is unhappy with the Dodd-Frank vote, they're not taking it out on Gillibrand, who is up for re-election again in 2012, and also voted for the bill. She leads all 2012 candidates in Wall Street contributions, nearly doubling the second-place candidate, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, who also supported Dodd-Frank.

Schumer said he didn't want to make it a partisan issue and that the "evil" effects of super PACs went "way beyond Wall Street."

After about eight minutes, he finally got to his talking points, saying Democrats won't "unilaterally disarm," but they will make campaign finance reform a "major issue" in the next six months.

"We're going to have hearings on the super PACs," he said. "We're going to ask the leaders of the super PACs and the contributors to come before us and ask why they don't want to be for disclosure and why they don't want to reveal what they're doing. And you will see that this will become a major issue in the campaigns and in the 2012 election."

Source

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ID Card for Workers Is at Center of Immigration Plan

By LAURA MECKLER


Getty Images
Customs and Border Protection agent Jesus Gomez checks a passport at the vehicle crossing at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in California.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

"It's the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking," Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. "If you say they can't get a job when they come here, you'll stop it."

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

"It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."

Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. "We've all got Social Security cards," he said. "They're just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That's all I'm saying."

U.S. employers now have the option of using an online system called E-Verify to check whether potential employees are in the U.S. legally. Many Republicans have pressed to make the system mandatory. But others, including Mr. Schumer, complain that the existing system is ineffective.

Last year, White House aides said they expected to push immigration legislation in 2010. But with health care and unemployment dominating his attention, the president has given little indication the issue is a priority.

Rather, Mr. Obama has said he wanted to see bipartisan support in Congress first. So far, Mr. Graham is the only Republican to voice interest publicly, and he wants at least one other GOP co-sponsor to launch the effort.

An immigration overhaul has long proven a complicated political task. The Latino community is pressing for action and will be angry if it is put off again. But many Americans oppose any measure that resembles amnesty for people who came here illegally.

Under the legislation envisioned by Messrs. Graham and Schumer, the estimated 10.8 million people living illegally in the U.S. would be offered a path to citizenship, though they would have to register, pay taxes, pay a fine and wait in line. A guest-worker program would let a set number of new foreigners come to the U.S. legally to work.

Most European countries require citizens and foreigners to carry ID cards. The U.K. had been a holdout, but in the early 2000s it considered national cards as a way to stop identify fraud, protect against terrorism and help stop illegal foreign workers. Amid worries about the cost and complaints that the cards infringe on personal privacy, the government said it would make them voluntary for British citizens. They are required for foreign workers and students, and so far about 130,000 cards have been issued.

Mr. Schumer first suggested a biometric-based employer-verification system last summer. Since then, the idea has gained currency and is now a centerpiece of the legislation being developed, aides said.

A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said.

The card requirement also would be phased in among employers, beginning with industries that typically rely on illegal-immigrant labor.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn't have a position on the proposal, but it is concerned that employers would find it expensive and complicated to properly check the biometrics.

Mr. Schumer said employers would be able to buy a scanner to check the IDs for as much as $800. Small employers, he said, could take their applicants to a government office to like the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their hands scanned there.

—Alistair MacDonald contributed to this article.
Write to Laura Meckler at laura.meckler@wsj.com .

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954904575110124037066854.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird