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Deal Reached Between Trump and Dems to Avert a Total Government Shutdown

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  January 29, 2026 6:45 PM

 We reported earlier today that President Trump and Chuck Schumer might have hashed out a framework for a deal to avert a government shutdown. Washington runs out of money on January 30. The winter storm and the recent shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis all but killed the initial House framework. Even without the Pretti shooting, some Senator—and it only takes one—would have likely objected to unanimous consent, delaying passage.  

So, with the House bills, which funded most of the government through September, now dead, something had to be hashed out to address Democratic opposition to the DHS bill. The earlier vote that didn’t clear the 60-vote threshold wasn't a shock, as that was related to the initial slate of bills from the House. The new approach splits the bills: the DHS bill will be voted on separately, likely as a two-week stopgap, so Congress can negotiate a new bill with added restrictions on ICE's operations.  Everything else appears to be slated for passage, which has to be done before midnight tomorrow. That's a tough task, given the pace of this place. We're likely in for a weekend shutdown, but not for every agency (via NBC News): 

President Donald Trump and Senate Democrats struck a deal Thursday to avert a prolonged shutdown for most of the federal government, five sources familiar with the agreement said, in an effort to de-escalate a bitter fight over the Department of Homeland Security and ICE that reached a boiling point after the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. 

While funding will temporarily lapse for multiple agencies starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, the impact is expected to be minimal since most federal employees don't work on the weekend. 

A Senate vote on the funding agreement could happen as soon as Thursday night. The House, which returns to Washington on Monday, would then need to pass the legislation and send it to Trump's desk for his signature.

“Hopefully, we won’t have a shutdown. We’re working on that right now. I think we’re getting close. The Democrats, I don’t believe want to see it either,” Trump said earlier in the day during his first Cabinet meeting of the new year. “So we’ll work in a very bipartisan way, I believe, not to have a shutdown. We don’t want to shut down.” 

The deal reflects what senators in both parties had floated just a day earlier: passing a short-term funding bill for DHS, while the two parties negotiate changes to the department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which it oversees, along with bills to fund the rest of the government through Sept. 30. 

The final outstanding issue in the negotiations was how long the stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, would fund DHS. The two sides agreed to a two-week CR that would keep DHS running through Feb. 13, just before both chambers depart for a weeklong recess, the sources told NBC News. 

Trump has worked overtime cleaning up the public relations disaster in the wake of that shooting, tapping Tom Homan to oversee all operations. He doesn’t need a shutdown on his plate, and Democrats likely don’t want one either. There are also winter storms brewing for the area throughout most of February. It’s not the time to get silly here, but the talks on how to rein in ICE make me nervous.