Get ready for a rare working weekend in the Senate with no break in sight.
Majority Leader John Thune is keeping senators at the Capitol the next few days to continue debating an all-but-doomed elections bill and advance nominees. Senators may have to work through the following weekend as well if the Department of Homeland Security is still shut down, threatening their planned two-week recess.
“I’m not excited about it,” one GOP senator told POLITICO.
In the meantime, the Senate is expected to vote again Friday on a DHS funding bill that will fail.
— ‘SAVE’ action Saturday: Senators will likely vote Saturday on an amendment to the SAVE America Act that would ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports — a demand from President Donald Trump that isn’t in the House-passed bill. The amendment will almost certainly fail to reach the necessary 60 votes, given Democrats are likely unified in their opposition. Keep an eye on which Republicans vote against the amendment.
The Senate could also consider Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s procedural gambit to force a vote that’s tangentially related to TSA funding. The effort would need 60 votes, meaning it will likely fail. Republicans could try to kill it before Saturday.
— Mullin vote Sunday: The Senate will then take its first vote on Sunday to move forward with Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s (R-Okla.) nomination to become DHS secretary, after he cleared a committee vote Thursday morning.
Mullin should be on a glidepath to confirmation. Republican senators believe Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) beef is personal and doesn’t reflect a larger issue among GOP senators. The question is how many Democrats will vote for their soon-to-be former colleague as the DHS funding impasse goes on. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the sole Democrat who helped advance him out of committee.
The Senate will also vote likely Sunday to confirm Colin McDonald to be assistant attorney general for national fraud enforcement.
— Recess at risk: Next week isn’t looking much better for the Senate schedule. Absent a DHS deal, Thune said Thursday the Senate won’t leave for its two-week recess.
“We’ll find out very quickly, I think, if the Dems want to make a deal,” Thune told POLITICO Thursday night. “I think there’s deal space there. … We just got to find out how serious the Democrats are.”
A DHS funding agreement doesn’t appear likely any time soon. A group of bipartisan senators left a meeting with White House border czar Tom Homan Thursday afternoon with few signs of progress.
Thune said Republicans are waiting to see if rank-and-file Democrats can get “permission” to negotiate a DHS agreement, suggesting GOP senators see the path out of the shutdown through the same group that solved last year’s funding fight. But another person granted anonymity to discuss Thursday’s closed-door meeting said it wouldn’t enable Republicans to pick off one-or-two Democrats at a time.
“I’m glad the White House was here, but we are a long ways apart,” Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told reporters leaving the meeting.
