US President Donald Trump has said Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have reached an agreement to move forward with parts of a funding package.
Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed to a package of five spending bills on Thursday, but removed a sixth bill from the package related to funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the BBC’s US partner CBS News reported.
Funding for DHS will continue at its current amount for two weeks while both sides work out a new deal to fund the agency, CBS News said.
US President Donald Trump endorsed the deal, and wrote in a post on social media: “Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan “YES” Vote.”
The deal approves funding for the defence department, the health department, the treasury, the federal court system and other agencies until the end of the 2026 fiscal year on 30 September.
In his post Trump added: “Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come together to get the vast majority of the Government funded until September, while at the same time providing an extension to the Department of Homeland Security (including the very important Coast Guard, which we are expanding and rebuilding like never before).”
Democrats have been pushing to remove funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from a $1.2tn (£870bn) federal spending package since a federal agent killed a second US citizen in Minneapolis over the weekend.
The DHS is a sprawling department encompassing multiple agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Coast Guard and Secret Service.
Thousands of federal agents from ICE and CBP have been deployed to Minnesota as part of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in the state.
In Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good on 7 January, and a Border Patrol officer shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti on 24 January. Both killings, and the ongoing immigration operation in the state, have sparked protests around the country. The second shooting led Democrats, and some Republicans, to push back on approving DHS funding.
