WASHINGTON — President Trump predicted that “desperate” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will soon cut a deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, warning that the GOP will nix the filibuster if he doesn’t.
“Chuck Schumer, a desperate, crippled politician, who has lost control of the Radical Left Democrats, will make a deal now because he thinks that if he doesn’t, Republicans will TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, something which they should do whether he makes a deal or not!!!” Trump sniped on Truth Social.
Schumer’s office declined to comment on Trump’s Truth Social jab.
Since Feb. 14, Senate Democrats have leveraged the 60-vote filibuster to block GOP-backed measures to fully fund DHS, now the second-longest shutdown in US history.
They’ve demanded a sweeping set of reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amid the president’s nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration.
Over the past couple of weeks, Trump dialed up the pressure on Republicans to scrap the filibuster altogether to reopen DHS and pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has warned that Republicans simply lack the votes to end or roll back the filibuster, fearing a future where Democrats would have unobstructed control of the Senate.
On Wednesday, once hopeful rumblings that a deal to finally reopen the DHS was within reach collapsed after Democrats presented their counteroffer to Republicans.
The GOP had grudgingly warmed up to the idea of funding everything within DHS except the deportation wing of ICE, something that Republicans would later fund separately via the reconciliation process, which bypasses the filibuster.
But the Democrats re-upped many of their demands, including ones that Republicans have deemed nonstarters, such as requiring ICE agents to identify themselves and enacting warrant reforms.
“I don’t know how you get to a solution where they keep moving the goalposts and where, when you hit a target that they said would be acceptable, they walk away from it,” Thune vented to reporters Wednesday. “That’s happened multiple times, including most recently over the weekend.”
“It’s not even close to being real,” he said of the Dems’ demands. “They know better. They’re asking for things that have already been turned down. So it just seems like they’re going in circles, spinning, spinning.”
A top Democratic aide told The Post that there were “no new asks.”
“The counteroffer includes some of the same basic reforms Democrats have been discussing for months — including several that the White House has already agreed to in principle, like officer identification, body-worn cameras, protecting sensitive locations from enforcement actions, and basic training standards,” the aide told The Post.
Transportation Security Administration agents are set to miss their second full paycheck on Friday, with the agency’s boss revealing that over 480 screeners have quit, and call-out rates have surged to double digits.
As a result, airport wait lines have exploded across the country, topping four and a half hours in some cases.
