Momentum toward reopening DHS evaporated today as Democrats drew a hard line on reforms to ICE, swiftly rejecting a proposal that GOP senators had only just persuaded President Trump to entertain.

Why it matters: The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for more than five weeks — and the resistance from Democrats, paired with skepticism among some Republicans, including Trump, casts serious doubt on whether Congress can strike a deal this week.

• GOP senators had just persuaded Trump to back off his demands that the SAVE America Act be included in a DHS funding package, arguing that a narrower deal could pass the Senate.

But Democrats immediately shot down the latest proposal — and some Republicans framed it as a capitulation to Democrats.

• "Until we get the reforms that we want in ICE, we don't want to vote for ICE funding, knowing they already pre-funded it," Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told reporters, referencing the $75 billion ICE received in last year's "big, beautiful bill."
• "I don't want to vote to defund ICE, and I don't want to vote to cut ICE's funding.… I would hope that we would not, as Republicans, be defunding ICE," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said.

Driving the news: Republicans sent Democrats a proposal today that would fund all of DHS except parts of ICE's enforcement operations.

• GOP leaders would then work to include additional funding for ICE in reconciliation 2.0.
• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made clear that Democrats aren't budging without reforms to ICE — and that they plan on sending a counterproposal.

The other side: "A lot of the reforms are contingent on funding for ICE," Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday afternoon.

• "If you're not going to have funding, I don't know how all of a sudden now you can demand reforms."

Zoom out: Conservative Republicans also are uneasy with carving out ICE funding, and unconvinced that promises of future action through reconciliation will materialize.

• "I can't imagine why we're doing something where everybody in federal government is not getting paid while senators get paid," Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) tells us.
• And President Trump offered only lukewarm support: "We're going to take a good, hard look at it.… But I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it."

At the same time, promises to include the SAVE America Act in that same reconciliation bill have been met with deep skepticism and outrage from conservatives, who say it wouldn't survive the Senate's Byrd bath.

• "This is gaslighting," the House Freedom Caucus posted today on X.

The intrigue: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said a deal to fund all of DHS but ICE would likely get "strong Democratic support" in his chamber.

• That's not going to make resisting a deal in the Senate any easier for Schumer.

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— Kate Santaliz

House Democrats have clamped down on internal divisions ahead of an expected vote to constrain Trump's ability to wage war with Iran, we've learned from lawmakers familiar with the matter.

Why it matters: That apparent Democratic unity gives the measure a more realistic chance of passing the House, with a pair of isolationist Republicans having voted for it last time.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can afford only one GOP defection on an otherwise party-line vote.

🪖 Four House Democrats — Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Greg Landsman (Ohio) and Juan Vargas (Calif.) — broke ranks this month and voted against a resolution to immediately end the conflict.

• A senior House Democrat and another Democrat familiar with the matter told us that most, if not all, of the four defectors are expected to flip and vote for the measure this time.

💥 The four Democratic defectors were subject to intense criticism from the party's grassroots, and as the conflict has dragged on, Democratic opposition to it has only calcified.

• Landsman said Friday that he would flip to "yes" and urged his colleagues to do the same.
• A Cuellar spokesperson declined to say how he would vote but pointed us to an alternative war powers resolution he supported that would give the administration until March 30 — just six days from now — to wind down the war.
• A spokesperson for Golden declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Vargas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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— Andrew Solender

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is suing Booz Allen Hamilton in federal court, we scooped today, after his tax returns were leaked along with those of other wealthy Americans, including Trump and Elon Musk.

🔥 Why it matters: The tech and management consulting firm is already facing retribution from the Trump administration, which canceled all of its contracts with the Treasury Department in January.

• Charles Littlejohn, who performed IRS contract work through Booz Allen, pleaded guilty to unauthorized disclosure of tax information in 2023 and was sentenced to five years in prison.
• His leaks were linked to a bombshell New York Times story in 2020 on Trump's tax payments, as well as a ProPublica report in 2021 about a cache of tax documents from Musk, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and others.
• Spokespeople for Booz Allen Hamilton did not respond to a request for comment.

⚡️ Flashback: Scott is a close ally of Trump and was one of the first prominent Republicans to support his presidential bid.

• Musk backed Scott when he ran for majority leader in 2024, knocking Thune as the "top choice of Democrats."

⚖️ Scott's 25-page complaint, filed in the Middle District of Florida, accuses Booz Allen of a "systemic failure to safeguard confidential taxpayer information" that was "enabled by systemic safeguard failures and negligent supervision."

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— Andrew Solender