House passes Senate DHS funding bill after Johnson reverses course on 76-day shutdown standoff

The House of Representatives approved by voice vote a Senate-passed spending measure covering most of the department's appropriations through September.  

President Donald Trump is expected to swiftly sign the measure into law, restoring funding for the Secret Service, Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Transportation Security Administration, among other agencies.

The vote came after the Senate's DHS funding bill had stalled in the lower chamber for more than a month as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declined to put the bill on the floor over objections to language he said defunded law enforcement. The speaker's opposition reflected the views of many in the Republican conference, who viewed the bill as a dead letter when the Senate passed it unanimously in March.

Johnson changed course this week after the White House appeared to side with the Senate and urged swift passage of the upper chamber's bill. 

"We're not defying the White House," Johnson told reporters Wednesday. "Everybody understands what we're doing. We're all one team."

In an internal memo sent to Hill offices and obtained by Fox News Digital, the White House warned it would not be able to pay employees starting in May if the House did not pass the Senate's partial DHS bill. The administration since early April had been using existing funds to cover six weeks of back pay and a new pay period for DHS employees - but warned that money was quickly depleting.

Republicans are in the beginning stages of writing a separate party-line package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But that legislation will not advance before lawmakers leave Washington for the upcoming recess period. 

Johnson said he dropped his objections to the Senate bill after his chamber took the first step toward funding Trump's immigration enforcement agenda late Wednesday."We had to ensure that they could not isolate and eliminate those two critical agencies," Johnson told reporters. "That was critically important for us to ensure that we're going to protect the homeland."

Some Republicans argued that failure to move the Senate's DHS bill prior to leaving Washington for a planned recess was untenable.

"We have got to fund DHS, even if it's 80% of DHS," Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital in an interview. "We're in a dangerous position with funding levels right now. We have to get this done before we even think of leaving on a recess."

Langworthy sent a letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, to Johnson earlier in the week imploring the speaker to put the Senate's DHS bill up for a vote. 

"What other avenue of approach are you going to have?" Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital when asked about whether the House would take up the Senate's languishing DHS bill. "This is hurting families of individuals willing to serve their communities, their nation, their state. Why wouldn't we?"

Democrats, who initially sparked the shutdown over objections to funding immigration enforcement, supported the Senate measure because it did not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

"Bring the bipartisan Senate-passed bill to the House Floor today, and it would fund the Department of Homeland Security in its entirety with the exception of ICE and the violent Republican mass deportation machine," Jeffries said at a news conference on Monday.

House conservatives did not ask for a recorded vote on the Senate DHS bill despite warning about the precedent of passing an appropriations bill that isolates immigration enforcement funding from the rest of the department. 

"That vote was going to pass if there was a suspension vote, so we agree to let it go by voice [vote]," Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters Thursday.