A partial government shutdown looms
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What incident sparked the current immigration policy debate?
Following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Preddy by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis last Saturday, Democrats have taken a stand against the Trump administration's immigration policy. Senate Democrats are refusing to advance a must-pass appropriations package if it includes funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, January 30th, 2026. Joining me now to discuss the possibility of another partial government shutdown is USA Today congressional reporter Zach Shermalee.
What were the outcomes of the Senate vote on the funding deal?
It's good to speak to you, Zach.
You too, Dana.
Zach, Thursday afternoon saw a failed Senate vote on passing a previously agreed upon funding deal. What happened there?
So all Democrats and seven Republicans in the Senate failed to advance a what was originally bipartisan funding package that included six Republicans. of the federal government's 12 annual appropriations bills.
How are Senate Democrats responding to the Trump administration's policies?
So essentially, as you noted, ever since the killing over the weekend of Alex Preddy, a 37-year-old ICU nurse in Minneapolis, Senate Democrats have been extremely united over their concerns regarding the Trump administration's immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis and, you know, just point blank said to Senate Republicans and to the White House, we are not going to advance this funding package despite having negotiated over it for months. months if there is not an agreement to strip out a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and Border Patrol. We need that to be stripped out of the broader funding package, and we'll fund the rest of the government, but we want to buy some time to negotiate over our concerns related to immigration.
After the vote, the White House and Senate Democrats did come to a deal. They said that they are going to move forward with taking out the Department of Homeland Security funding bill.
What provisions were included in the previously agreed legislation?
They're going to pass instead a short term measure for that agency to buy them some time. time to continue on with negotiations about reform there while moving forward with the rest of their appropriations bills. This doesn't, though, avert necessarily a partial government shutdown because there are just a lot of logistical hurdles that now have to happen, namely that the legislation has to go back to the House of Representatives, which is out. So we could see a partial shutdown, even a short one over the coming days.
You said prior to the fatal shooting of Alex Preti, Democrats had been signaling they wanted to avoid a partial government shutdown. Zach, you wrote that the previously agreed upon legislation included some notable reversals of some of President Donald Trump's steepest cuts. Tell me about some of those provisions.
You know, it's really interesting, Dana, we have seen lawmakers in this Congress make some notable headway with respect to pushing back both Republicans and Democrats on some of the infringement, frankly, that the president, that the executive branch has engaged in with respect to their spending authority, right? So Russ Vogt and the Office of Management and Budget and many federal agencies have in
Is the looming partial government shutdown primarily about DHS funding?
so many instances over the course of President Trump's second term back in the White House, essentially decided with respect to all sorts of government programs that they were going to stop those programs for the foreseeable future for whatever reason. And that has wrangled even quietly some congressional Republicans. And so this spending package includes a lot of reversals to those cuts. It's a big win for Democrats and a big win for Republicans like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the chair of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, who's very supportive of a lot of federal programs that for a long time have been bipartisan. So there's support for those funding measures in these appropriations bills.
And that's really a rebuke of a lot of the cuts to spending that the Trump administration has proceeded with.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What incident sparked the current immigration policy debate?
0:04–0:41
2
What were the outcomes of the Senate vote on the funding deal?
0:41–1:13
3
How are Senate Democrats responding to the Trump administration's policies?
1:13–2:28
4
What provisions were included in the previously agreed legislation?
2:28–3:47
5
Is the looming partial government shutdown primarily about DHS funding?
3:47–5:23
6
Which Democratic lawmakers are leading the charge against the shutdown?
5:23–6:20
7
How are Republicans reacting to the immigration enforcement controversy?
6:20–9:05
8
What impact will a partial government shutdown have on federal employees and programs?
9:05–15:07
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Excerpt
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