House GOP erupts over Senate’s overnight move to fund pieces of DHS

By Sarah Ferris, Annie Grayer, Lauren Fox, CNN

(CNN) — Speaker Mike Johnson does not currently have the House votes to approve the Senate’s early morning funding measure to fund large swaths of the Department of Homeland Security.

But the House Republican leader and his team are so furious about the bill that they do not want to put it to a vote on the floor. At issue, multiple GOP sources say, is that Senate Republicans did not include money for federal immigration enforcement or border patrol in the funding bill that would reopen the remainder of the department.

“The one thing I can tell you is that there is a common disgust from our leadership team and from our members about what they did over in the Senate, and it really was not appropriate,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said Friday morning.

Enraged House conservatives, meanwhile, publicly blasted the bill they said Senate Majority Leader John Thune jammed through his chamber in the middle of the night, with no roll call vote or the chance to debate it. And some in the House GOP leadership team are seriously contemplating whether to reject the measure altogether and put forward their own proposal, the sources said – though no decisions have yet been made.

Johnson and his team are now scrambling to figure out if the GOP conference can accept the bill or whether they should attempt to boomerang legislation with their own priorities back to the Senate, the sources said.

GOP leaders have spent the morning huddling about next steps, while staff has frantically pored through the bill.

In one display of anger, leaders of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus announced they would not support the Senate measure, demanding that any bill include money for border patrol, as well as one of President Donald Trump’s top domestic priorities: new voter ID restrictions.

“The only thing we’re going to support is adding that funding into the bill, adding voter ID, sending it back to the Senate, make them come back in and do their work,” said Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, who leads the Freedom Caucus.

And he downplayed the urgency felt by some of his GOP colleagues that airports will suffer in the meantime: “The president has already said he’s going to fund TSA out of funds he has.”

While Thune told reporters in the early morning hours of Friday that he believed the “House is aware of what we’re contemplating,” multiple senior GOP House leaders told CNN they received no warning about Thune’s plans to push through a measure that would only partially fund the department.

“I don’t even know what it is yet,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole told CNN when asked Friday about whether he could support the plan.

House GOP leaders are skeptical they can pass the bill under regular order, which requires a procedural vote on the floor that requires near-total unanimity among Republicans. (Some Democrats have suggested they would help with that vote, an unusual move that reflects the tight House margins and growing desire to find a funding solution.)

Another option would be Democrats helping to pass the bill under a fast-tracked process that requires two-thirds approval of the House, known as “suspension.”

But GOP hardliners detest this suspension route – and have actually tucked a provision in House rules that prevents those kinds of votes from happening on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Leadership can get around the rule, but it would cause intense consternation in their ranks.

Either route would be messy and likely require Trump’s blessing to help round up GOP votes.

But some Republicans insist they party has no choice, with TSA woes increasing by the hour during a popular spring break travel season, as well as concerns about FEMA, Coast Guard operations and others.

“I mean, we’ve got to, for God’s sake, we’ve got to open this piece of government up,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey told CNN.

“We do it the hardest, most painful, most awkward, most drawn out miserable way, but eventually we get it done,” Rep. Frank Lucas told CNN. “This is a classic example of that.”

House Democrats have not made formal statements about the measure but multiple people close to leadership believe the majority of the caucus will ultimately support the plan. The conference is huddling Friday morning to discuss next steps — and how much help they’re willing to lend Johnson on the floor.

While the bill does not include reforms that the party had pushed for, it does not include any new money for ICE — a significant concession, since Democrats see this as a chance for further negotiation in the future.

Importantly for Democrats, the bill does not include money for Border Patrol, which was a major sticking point in previous talks. (The Senate measure does include money for US customs operations.)

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CNN’s Ted Barrett and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.