De-escalation: House ends DHS shutdown after 76 days

The House passed by voice vote a bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security while excluding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The step ends a 76-day lapse, the longest agency shutdown in U.S. history.

The bill follows a plan the Senate advanced in March to keep the rest of the department running while Republicans pursue a separate budget bill to fund ICE and CBP without Democratic votes. Democrats had withheld support for those immigration functions while pushing for changes such as body cameras and limits on face coverings after federal officers killed two Americans in Minnesota earlier this year.

Homeland Security had warned it was running out of stopgap money to meet payroll. Secretary Markwayne Mullin said emergency funds were empty and the department’s payroll is about $1.6 billion every two weeks with only one more covered. Trump had authorized the department to tap last year’s large spending package, but those funds were nearly exhausted.

AI-synthesized from multiple reported sources