The Hitchhiker’s Guide to what to expect on DHS funding when the Senate meets Monday

The DHS funding drama heads back to the Senate on Monday morning after the House approved a two-month stopgap spending plan for all of DHS late Friday night.

The Senate meets on Monday at 10:30 am et in what was supposed to be a brief “pro forma” session where the body simply gavels in and gavels out with a skeleton crew on hand.

But that might not be what happens Monday. As soon as the Senate gets through the prayer and pledge, it’s likely a Republican senator seeks recognition from the chair.

If that happens, we anticipate the GOP senator to ask for unanimous consent (meaning all 100 senators would agree) to take up the DHS bill passed by the House on Friday, that it be “read a third time” and passed.

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The chair will then ask if there is an objection.

If any senator – be they a Democrat or Republican – objects, the House bill is dead. That means that the House and Senate continue to be out of alignment on the DHS funding question. For instance, the House didn’t even consider the bill cleared by all 100 senators and passed by the Senate at 2:19 am Friday. The House simply wrote their own two-month interim bill, passed it Friday night and skipped town.

If there is no objection, the House and Senate are aligned and will have passed the same bill. That means they are on the same page.

Approval of the House bill by the Senate would end the DHS shutdown.

But if there’s an objection, everything remains frozen.

This is both the parliamentary magic – and dark underbelly of “unanimous consent” in the Senate. You could have 99 senators in favor of something. But all it takes is a solitary objection to foil a bill under “unanimous consent” or “UC” as it’s often called in the Senate.

In fact, it’s possible that Democrats could then offer their own DHS funding bill and ask the Senate to approve that by unanimous consent. It’s likely that whatever Republican senator is on duty tomorrow would object, thus blocking the Democratic request.

If the Senate blocks the House bill, it’s doubtful there’s any way to end the DHS shutdown until after both bodies return in mid-April after the Easter/Passover recess.

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Republicans truly want to fund DHS. But a Democratic objection presents the GOP with a political opportunity. They can then point to that objection as the reason DHS remains shuttered, arguing that Democrats blocked the House-approved bill.

Republicans believe this helps them in the midterms. They ran on border security and won in 2024. Republicans want to point to a Democratic objection as evidence that they don’t want to fund ICE.

But by the same token, Democrats could argue that Republicans are partly responsible for the shutdown and the long TSA lines if they object to the Democratic unanimous consent request.

And so it goes.