Hey there, it's the Empire Politics podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, we're going to be talking about the continuing saga of funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Let's start with Friday, though, when it seemed like

the Senate had a deal that might solve this entire thing. But Sam, tell us about the Senate

compromise first before we get into what happened to it. So sometime after 2 a.m. on Friday morning,

the Senate came together on a deal that would fund almost all of the Department of Homeland Security, including FEMA and the Coast Guard,

but it would exclude funding for immigration and customs enforcement and border patrol.

This is something that Democrats had been refusing to fund after the shootings of those two U.S.

citizens in Minneapolis by federal immigration officers. And Republicans

had pushed back on not funding DHS fully, but as lines at airports got worse over the course of the

week, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate were able to come together around this deal.

Yeah. Can you tell me what was in there about, like really the center of all this, which is

the reforms that Democrats wanted to happen at ICE? What was in the plan, like really the center of all this, which is the reforms that Democrats

wanted to happen at ICE. What was in the plan to deal with all that? Nothing. This deal

included none of the policy changes that Democrats had been pushing for over the course of these

last several weeks. What Democrats did get out of this is no new funding for ICE and for Border Patrol, but no policy

changes specifically. All right. So what happened in the House? So there was all this optimism

that a deal was at hand. The Senate actually left town for a two-week recess. But then when it got

over to the House side, very quickly it became apparent that House Republicans were not going to be behind this deal, particularly conservatives in the House Republican caucus because this did not include the Save America Act, this voting law overhaul that President Trump and his allies in Congress have been pushing.

And so instead, House Republicans said they were

going to put forward a 60-day extension of DHS funding that would include money for ICE and

customs and border protection. It has been made very clear by Democrats in the Senate that that is

unacceptable to them. And the minority party in the Senate does have some power. And so right now,

this has ended up at a standstill. And Congress is not in session for two weeks. So this shutdown is

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