Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) have announced a “two-track” plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security through the end of President Donald Trump’s term. First, House Republicans will pass the bipartisan Senate bill that will fund all of DHS, but Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, through September 2026. Separately, both chambers will then pass a reconciliation bill, on a party-line vote, that will fund all of DHS through the end of the Trump presidency.
Not only is this a wise move necessary to protect historic border security accomplishments, but Republicans should apply it to the rest of the government before Democrats undo other accomplishments through the appropriations process.
Trump’s success on border security is his most impressive. As recently as December 2023, more than 300,000 illegal immigrants were crossing the southern border with Mexico, and President Joe Biden was releasing the vast majority of them, hundreds of thousands each month, into the country.
Democrats and their media allies said legislation, including amnesty, was essential to solving the decadeslong border crisis. But Trump proved them laughably wrong. On his first day in office, the president ordered the end of Biden’s catch-and-release border policy. All migrants caught crossing the border were detained or sent back to Mexico.
The successful implementation of this policy took Herculean efforts to increase detention capacity and diplomatic pressure to force Mexico not only to take more migrants back from the United States but also to step up its own enforcement efforts so migrants never reached the border in the first place. Trump also stepped up interior immigration enforcement, sending a clear signal to those who tried to enter the country illegally that their mere presence inside the U.S. no longer guaranteed permanent residency.
As a direct result of these policies, all of which required time, effort, and money, the release of illegal immigrants into the U.S. fell to zero in May 2025, and it has stayed there ever since.
Democrats want to dismantle every aspect of this policy success. They don’t believe in detaining illegal immigrants at the border, they don’t believe the U.S. has a sovereign right to deny migrants entry into the country, and they don’t believe anyone already in the country should be deported. Hence, their reckless campaign to reverse Trump’s immigration policies by denying funding to DHS, and now to CBP and ICE.
Thune and Johnson have promised to secure funding through the end of Trump’s first term via reconciliation, a process that sidesteps the filibuster. Considering the likelihood of Democrats taking one or both chambers of Congress in this fall’s elections, this is a wise step.
But what about the other areas that will be left vulnerable to Democratic Party hostage taking?
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order, “Unleashing American Energy to start an era of American Energy Dominance. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has accelerated leasing and permitting on federal lands, holding more oil and gas lease sales and approving more permits to drill than ever before. At the Department of Energy, Secretary Chris Wright has lifted restrictions on LNG exports while pursuing a nuclear renaissance, funding uranium enrichment, small modular reactors, and advanced fuel initiatives. These policies contributed to an all-time high U.S. energy output, including record crude oil production, near-record natural gas, and historic offshore oil volumes, lowering energy prices.
All of this would be at risk from Democratic Party appropriators.
At Trump’s direction, Secretary Linda McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education through large workforce cuts, canceled grant spending related to diversity, equity, and inclusion boondoggles, and shifted functions such as student loans and special education to other agencies. The administration has targeted higher education and K-12 policy by ending race-based admissions preferences, eliminating federal DEI mandates, tightening Title IX enforcement, reforming higher education accreditation, and promoting stricter discipline, patriotic civics, and religious liberty in schools.
All this reform would be at risk from Democratic Party appropriators.
Locking in Trump’s policy accomplishments across the federal government through reconciliation would not be the end of bipartisanship. If there were true bipartisan agreement on necessary changes to federal policy, those changes could still be made through the regular appropriations process. A future Congress can always undo what past Congresses have done.
TRUMP IS RIGHT TO REARM AMERICA
But by providing a baseline of funding to each agency, Democratic appropriators would be unable to use shutdowns as a weapon to extract policy concessions as they are trying to do with DHS, CBP, and ICE.
Trump’s energy and education accomplishments are worth defending, as are his accomplishments on immigration. Democrats should not be allowed to use appropriations brinkmanship to unravel policies voters chose at the ballot box. Republicans should fund the entire government through the end of Trump’s first term.
