Senate Republicans on Thursday are weighing whether to bow out of a major international gathering next week as leaders juggle a looming shutdown of the Homeland Security Department.
This year’s Munich Security Conference — a marquee transatlantic gathering that begins Feb. 13 — has taken on new urgency in the wake of President Donald Trump’s threats to invade Greenland, a Danish territory, and tariff core NATO allies over the dispute. Trump backed down, but dozens of lawmakers planned to go in order to shore up ties and reaffirm America’s commitment to NATO.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Munich mainstay and Trump ally, said he won’t attend unless a DHS deal is reached. The department is on a short-term stopgap funding measure while Democrats are demanding new limits and oversight on Immigration and Customs Enforcement practices, which Republicans say would undercut security.
“The reason we go to these places is to have an American voice, and if we can’t get our act together here, a lot of people are wondering what we’re going to do about Russia,” he said. “People say if you want to be safe at home you have to engage the world, and I agree.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another regular at the conference, told reporters his decision to go would hinge on the status of cross-party negotiations.
“Game day decision,” said Tillis, the top Republican on the Senate’s NATO Observer Group. “It’s gonna be based on how well we’re working and if the Democrats are being reasonable. That’s one thing, and if they’re not, it’s another thing.”
Not all Republicans are on the fence. Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he is going to the Munich Security Conference again this year and doesn’t anticipate the threat of a DHS shutdown derailing his trip, which includes Italy’s defense ministry and the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe’s parliamentary assembly in Vienna.
A spending deal that became law this week gives lawmakers until next Friday to negotiate a Homeland Security funding package. But funding will lapse if Republicans and Democrats can’t forge a deal by next weekend or don’t pass another stopgap.
Republican leaders stopped short of telling senators what they should do.
Earlier in the day, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that it’s a “serious question” whether senators should suspend their travel — including to Munich — until the impasse ends. “If we get to the end of next week and we’re in a shutdown posture, I think that the idea of people going on trips, no matter how justified or well-intended they are, it seems like that ought to be a non-starter,” he said.
Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, the top Democrat on the panel that controls defense funding, argued lawmakers from both parties should attend the international conference despite the funding standoff to shore up the transatlantic alliance. Trump’s Greenland pressure campaign “profoundly undermined” European confidence in the U.S., he said.
“We have a genuine problem in our transatlantic relationship,” Coons told reporters. “And to cancel sending a large delegation to Munich simply so that we can figure out how to actually do policing in a democracy sends exactly the wrong message.”
