Thune blasts Jeffries, Schumer as ‘afraid of their shadows’ as DHS funding fight heats up

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., doesn’t have confidence that top congressional Democrats want to fix Homeland Security funding as Congress gears up for tense negotiations in the coming days. 

With the partial four-day government shutdown now over, Democrats and Republicans are readying to relitigate the controversial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bill, which threatened to completely derail a previous bipartisan funding deal. 

And with nine days on the clock to figure out a way forward, Thune doesn’t believe that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., are prepared to actually reach a bipartisan deal on the bill. 

When asked if he viewed Jeffries, who rebelled against Schumer’s funding deal with President Donald Trump, as a good-faith partner in the coming back-and-forth, Thune said, ‘He’s just not.’

‘He and, for that matter, Leader Schumer, both are afraid of their shadows, and they’re getting a lot of rollback and pressure from their left,’ Thune said. ‘So, I don’t think they want to — particularly in [Jeffries’] case, I don’t think he wants to make a deal at all.’

Schumer on Tuesday said that Democrats would have a proposal ready for Republicans to review that same day, but Thune noted that no such list had been handed over to his side of the aisle. 

There may still be lingering discourse between the top Democratic leaders, too, after Jeffries turned his back on the Trump-Schumer funding deal. However, both met on Tuesday night, and Schumer affirmed that they were on the same page.

Meanwhile, DHS is currently operating under a two-week continuing resolution (CR) that maintains previous funding levels until Congress can pass legislation to fully fund it. But Thune and other Republicans believe that the truncated time period just isn’t long enough to actually hash out a deal. 

And it’s an open question whether Congress will again need to temporarily extend the funding patch, or allow the agency to shut down.

Compounding frustrations among Republicans is that the original DHS bill was the product of bipartisan negotiations and included several guardrails and reporting requirements targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that would limit or block funding if they weren’t met. 

‘I think they want to litigate, have the issue as a political issue,’ Thune said. ‘Whether or not there’s a solution remains to be seen, but at least what they’re saying publicly suggests that that’s not their objective.’