Trump administration live updates: House GOP rejects DHS funding bill passed by the Senate

The House is expected to vote around 10:30 p.m. ET on legislation to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security through May 22 at its funding level before the current agency shutdown.

The House has to take a few procedural steps in order to complete this tonight.

When the House adopts the rule for debate, the language in the rule will automatically pass the funding legislation.

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., said he will try to expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., once the House Ethics Committee makes its recommendation about how to sanction her.

"As I have said before, this represents one of the most egregious breaches of public trust, particularly for her constituents in Florida," Steube said in a post on X. "I will proceed with my motion to expel her once the final sanctions hearing concludes and the committee makes a recommendation to the House.”

The House Ethics Committee today found Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 ethics charges in connection with allegations that she stole millions in federal relief funds and funneled some of that to her congressional campaign. She has denied any wrongdoing.

Trump said in tonight's remarks that Democrats remind him of Iran amid the DHS funding fight in Washington.

"These people are lunatics," Trump said in Miami. "They sort of remind me of, they remind me actually, a little bit of Iran. They’re deranged."

Speaking at a Saudi investment conference in Florida, Trump referred to the Strait of Hormuz as the "Strait of Trump."

He said "we're negotiating" with Iran, and it would "be great if we could do something. But they have to open it up. They have to open up the Strait of Trump. I mean, Hormuz," he said to laughs from the audience.

"Excuse me, I'm so sorry. Such a terrible mistake. The fake news will say he accidentally said. No, there's no accidents with me. Not too many. If there were, we'd have a major story," he said.

The president has signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to pay TSA employees, finding the situation at airports around the country "constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security."

"I hereby direct the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to use funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations to provide TSA employees with the compensation and benefits that would have accrued to them if not for the Democrat-led DHS shutdown, consistent with applicable law," the order says.

The officers have been working without paychecks for weeks.

A White House official said the funds would come from the sweeping domestic policy law known as the One Big Beautiful Bill. While its unclear how exactly that would work, the administration has dipped into those unspent funds before to cover pay gaps during funding lapses.

The order does not set a time limit on the payments, but says, "Once regular funding for TSA has been restored, every effort should be made, as authorized by law, to adjust applicable funding accounts within DHS to ensure the continuation of DHS operations and activities consistent with planned expenditures prior to the lapse."

Vice President JD Vance told right-wing commentator Benny Johnson in a clip posted to social media that the Senate should not be going on recess without fully funding DHS.

“We should at least, the very minimum product that we should get before anybody’s going on recesses, is let’s reopen the Department of Homeland Security, OK?” he said. “We want the people who are running our Coast Guard ships and preventing drug cartels from bringing fentanyl into our country, we want them to get paid. They’re not getting paid because Democrats shut down DHS and went on recess. Republicans in the Senate should not be playing along.”

Vance also said he wants to abolish the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, but “we actually do not have 50 senators, not who would vote for the SAVE Act, but who would overrule the filibuster.”

He said the argument for keeping the filibuster because the Democrats could use it against Republicans is “the dumbest political argument I’ve ever seen.”

A Secret Service agent assigned to protect former first lady Jill Biden accidentally shot himself in the leg at Philadelphia International Airport today, authorities said.

Jill Biden was not in the area when the agent was injured during a “negligent discharge” of his firearm this morning, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told The Associated Press.

According to initial reports, the agent was traveling in an unmarked car when he accidentally discharged his gun shortly before 9 a.m., Philadelphia Police Officer Tanya Little said.

Other law enforcement officers came to assist the inured agent, who was taken to a local hospital. He is being treated for his injuries and was in stable condition, Guglielmi said. Another Secret Service spokesman, Nate Herring, said that the agent suffered a non-life-threatening injury.

“There was no impact to the protectee’s movement and they were not present at the time of the incident. There were no reported injuries to any other individuals and the special agent is being evaluated at an area hospital in stable condition,” Herring said.

Read the full story here.

'This is not a game': Speaker Johnson to propose alternative to Senate DHS funding deal

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In a press conference today, Speaker Mike Johnson rejected the Senate's bill to reopen some parts of the Department of Homeland Security, which passed early this morning.

"The Senate Democrats have hoisted upon this appropriations process their radical crazy agenda. We call it crazy, because that's what it is," Johnson said after telling reporters that he had just finished a two-hour-long conference call with the House Republican Caucus.

Johnson added later in his remarks, "[Democrats] have taken hostage the funding processes of government so that they can impose their radical agenda on the American people when we can't have any part of it. This gambit that was done last night is a joke." 

Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., today announced that he will not seek re-election this fall.

"After considerable reflection, 2026 will be my final year in Congress. This wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s the right one. I believe in making room for the next generation. It’s time to pass the torch and allow a new guard of conservative leaders to step forward and chart a path forward for Missourians," Graves, who has served in the House since 2001, wrote on his Facebook page.

The Missouri lawmaker joins a growing group of congressional lawmakers heading for the exits this year, with this year's class of retirees being the second-largest group to leave Congress at once since recordkeeping of this began.

Trump said this afternoon that he plans to request more funding for farmers in his next budget request.

"Today I'm promising to request additional farm relief for our great patriots in the next funding bill," he said to an audience of farmers at an event on the South Lawn of the White House.

He added, "We're pushing very hard for the new farm bill. The Democrats fight us ... They are not your natural politician. Any farmer that votes for a Democrat is crazy. They are brutal on the farmers."

Trump hasn't yet released his budget proposal for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, though is expected to unveil it soon.

Congress would ultimately decide the funding levels in the next set of government spending bills.

Farmers on the South Lawn of the White House today. Alex Wong / Getty Images

House GOP plans to propose alternative bill for DHS funding despite Senate deal

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Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told members on a House GOP conference call that he plans to put a short-term spending bill on the floor that would find all of DHS for 60 days, according to a source on the call, instead of the Senate-passed legislation.

The timing of when that vote would occur is still up in the air.

A bloc of House conservatives expressed outrage over the Senate deal, which left out funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parts of Customs and Border Protection. The conservative members vowed to vote against it, complicating swift passage in the House.

But Johnson’s proposal also complicates the effort to reopen DHS, as the Senate has already left for recess, and Democrats in the upper chamber have made clear they won’t fund ICE or CBP. 

The call-out rate for Transportation Security Administration officers was 11.83% yesterday, which was the highest number of the DHS shutdown so far, translating to more than 3,450 personnel taking off work.

The highest rates were at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

Trump said last night that he would sign an executive order to pay TSA agents. Meanwhile, House conservatives are balking at the DHS funding bill the Senate passed last night for leaving out immigration enforcement and deportation funds.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus came out against the Senate passed DHS funding bill this morning, with Chair Andy Harris, R-Md., decrying the decision to advance the bill without money for ICE.

"We can’t believe that the Senate abdicated its responsibility this morning of not funding the child sex-trafficking investigation division of ICE, that they didn’t fund the border patrol," he said.

The group wants the ICE and border patrol funding added back to the bill along with a voter ID provision," Harris said.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said it was “absolutely offensive to the people that we represent that the Senate would send over a bill that doesn’t fund border patrol and the core components of ICE.”

Costa Rica said yesterday that it would accept 25 deportees from the United States per week as part of an agreement to help the Trump administration’s latest policy of deporting immigrants to “third countries.”

The Central American nation joins a growing number of countries across Africa and the Americas that have signed contentious, often secretive agreements with the U.S. to accept deportees from other countries as Trump pressures governments to help him advance his agenda. In many cases, migrants who previously hoped to seek asylum in the U.S. are left in a legal “black hole” in foreign countries where they don’t speak the language.

Countries that have agreed to receive third-party migrants include South Sudan, Honduras, Rwanda, Guyana and several Caribbean islands such as Dominica and St. Kitts and Nevis.

“Costa Rica is prepared to see this flow of people,” Costa Rican Public Security Minister Mario Zamora Cordero said yesterday in a video statement.

Gov. Janet Mills and oyster farmer Graham Platner are battling over female voters as Maine’s critical Senate race heats up, underscoring how the group could be decisive both in the June Democratic primary and the November general election.

Mills and Platner have launched TV ads in recent days narrated by women and held dueling events highlighting women who are backing their campaigns. Platner’s campaign also has been heavily targeting women with ads online.

Read the full story here.

Trump's plan to sign an executive order to pay Transportation Security Administration personnel might not be needed if the House sends him the Senate-passed DHS funding bill, a senior administration official said. 

The White House is waiting to see what happens on the Hill today. But the official said that if the executive order is needed, the funds for TSA paychecks would come from the sweeping Republican domestic policy law known as the One Big Beautiful Bill.

While its unclear how exactly that would work, the administration has dipped into those unspent funds before to cover pay gaps during funding lapses.

After a rare and dramatic public hearing, a special House Ethics subcommittee today found Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., guilty of 25 ethics charges, capping a three-year investigation into allegations she stole millions in federal relief funds and funneled some of that to her congressional campaign.

The secret vote came after Cherfilus-McCormick and her attorney sat for a nearly seven-hour televised House trial, after which lawmakers on the panel deliberated overnight for hours before reaching their decision.

Cherfilus-McCormick has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in a separate but related federal criminal case.

Read the full story here.

In the first meeting of the new White House anti-fraud task force today, the vice president outlined the Trump administration's initiatives aimed at combating fraud, calling the anti-fraud task force a "whole-of-government approach."

"What we’re going to actually do is force the bureaucracy to take this seriously and work together as political principals to make sure that we stop allowing fraudsters to steal the American people’s money," Vance told reporters and attendees at the meeting.

"All of these Cabinet officials are looking at what’s going on and focusing on it," the vice president added, shouting out several Cabinet secretaries he said are invested in combating fraud, like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner.

Rollins, Kennedy and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who was sworn in to his post earlier this week, were among the officials who attended the meeting.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters to "stay tuned" when asked about his plans for the Senate-passed bill to fund most of DHS.

As he arrived for the day, Johnson said he would be talking to members this morning “to decide that strategy” about how to proceed. 

House rules prohibit the speaker from circumventing the typical legislative process and fast-tracking the legislation on a Friday. The rules state that he can only do that Monday to Wednesday. 

Under the normal process, the House needs to pass a rule that outlines how a bill will be considered on the floor before voting on it. But it is unclear if conservatives will support doing so for a bill that doesn't fund ICE, and the minority party typically doesn't help to pass rules. 

Any procedural work-arounds to fast-track the bill would require conservatives buy-in given the GOP's narrow majority. 

A group of Epstein survivors filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration and Google yesterday over the disclosure of personal information found in the release of files related to the late sex offender over the past several months.

“The United States, acting through the DOJ, made a deliberate policy choice to prioritize rapid, large-volume disclosure over protection of Epstein survivors’ privacy,” the plaintiffs said, adding that the Justice Department “outed approximately 100 survivors of the convicted sexual predator, publishing their private information and identifying them to the world.”

Read the full story here.

The Education Department will relocate from its headquarters to a smaller Washington office as part of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the agency, officials said yesterday.

The agency has seen its ranks thinned by mass layoffs since Trump took office, and its headquarters building has been 70% vacant, the Education Department said. In its place, the Energy Department will assume the lease in the building.

Read the full story here.

Trump is adding his name to U.S. dollar bills, the first time a sitting president’s signature will go on paper currency, the Treasury Department announced today.

Trump’s signature will go on the bills in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary, the Treasury said. Historically, paper currency carries the signatures of the treasury secretary and the treasurer.

U.S. paper currency has featured the treasurer’s along with the treasury secretary’s or the register of the treasurer’s signatures since it was first printed in 1861.

Read the full story here.

After more than six hours, members of the House Ethics Committee last night concluded a rare public hearing focused on a sitting member of Congress.

The hearing centered on the panel’s investigation into Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., who was indicted on charges she stole millions in federal relief funds and used the money to bankroll her congressional campaign.

Following the marathon meeting, committee members huddled behind closed doors to deliberate the case and determine whether their colleague is guilty of violating House rules. Committee chair Michael Guest, R-Miss., said the panel will announce its findings in a statement.

Cherfilus-McCormick, who appeared at last night's hearing but did not speak, has consistently denied all allegations of wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in her criminal case.

Read the full story here.

Vice President JD Vance will convene the first meeting of a new White House anti-fraud task force today, an administration official told NBC News.

The project, which Trump announced last month in his State of the Union address, is aimed at reducing federal spending by identifying misuse of federal funds.

Read the full story here.

The Senate agreed unanimously early this morning to fund the Department of Homeland Security, but without funding for immigration enforcement and deportation operations.

Senators approved the package at 2:20 a.m. by voice vote following a marathon session, hours after Trump announced he would sign an order to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration officers.

The bill is expected to have Trump’s support but faces an uncertain future in the House.

Read the full story here.