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Legislative Recap Jan. 30, 2026: Shutdown? Shutdown. Also More Epstein Files »
Shutdown? Shutdown. Also More Epstein Files
Jan. 30, 2026 · by Amy West
Shutdown? Shutdown
By midday on Friday, January 30 the Senate had not passed the remaining appropriations bills and the current continuing resolution funding parts of the federal government ended Saturday night at midnight. The House is not in session this weekend, so there will definitely be a brief partial weekend shutdown, but the government is expected to be funded again, for a time, by later in the week.
As a recap, Congress is supposed to pass appropriations bills before the fiscal year begins on October 1, and last year’s failure to do so led to the long October-November shutdown. In November, Congress reached a deal to fund some federal entities through the rest of this fiscal year (Agriculture, VA, and Congress itself) and then in mid-January reached a deal to fund others (Commerce, DOJ, Interior, and more), but that still left out a lot. Now, Congress is working to fund Defense, Homeland Security (DHS), Labor, HHS, Education, Transportation, HUD, State, and more). It looked like a deal had been reached until CBP killed Minnesotan Alex Pretti.
Friday night, the Senate passed 71-29 a revised version of H.R. 7148: Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026. While it has the same bill number as the one passed in the House last Friday, the content is different. The Senate changed DHS funding to a two-week continuing resolution, after which point DHS would face another potential shutdown, and attached that to the other five appropriations bills to fund those remaining parts of the government for the rest of the fiscal year.
So now, in order to keep this shutdown short, the House must vote again on H.R. 7148. Given that the White House has signaled support for this plan, the expectation was that things would go smoothly in the House on Monday. But as of February 1, House Democrats are blocking fast-track rules, which will add a few extra days to the process at most.
There was a hiccup on Thursday when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), said he was objecting to this plan unless a repealed-in-the-House provision was reinstated. That provision would allow a small number of senators to sue the government for exorbitant monetary damages as the result of searches in Operation Arctic Frost. (This article is about the first unanimous House vote to repeal that provision, but they again voted unanimously last week and attached the repeal to the appropriations bills.) As of this morning, Sen. Graham also says he objects to the plan because he wants a vote on banning sanctuary cities.
Graham agreed to let the vote go forward once Majority Leader Thune agreed to separate votes later on reinstating the monetary damages provision as well as a vote on legislation against sanctuary cities.
What Effect Will the Two Week Continuing Resolution Have on ICE?
Very little. As Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) noted on X about just ICE, an agency within DHS:
In 2025, ICE received $10 billion in appropriations. The 2026 bill holds ICE at $10 billion — but last year Congress gave them $75 billion in advance funding. So even if ICE appropriations were eliminated, ICE would still have a 750% increase over last year.
Two articles this week have noted how ICE has been spending its vast sums of money: The powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal to track suspects — and protesters from the Washington Post and ICE Begins Buying ‘Mega’ Warehouse Detention Centers Across US from Bloomberg. A shutdown or continuing resolution would have no effect on these expenditures. Heck, even if ICE received no new funding at all this year, it would have no effect because these are expenditures based on appropriations already made.
Other parts of DHS do need funding to continue full normal operations, such as TSA, FEMA, and CISA.
Epstein Files
According to Ryan Nobles, an NBC reporter:
JUST IN: Deputy AG Todd Blanche says the Department of Justice has now released every file connected to the Epstein investigation that they are legally allowed and/or forced to release.
The files are posted on the Department of Justice website.
Today marks six weeks since the files were supposed to be released, if the administration felt compelled to follow the law. Is it all of the files? Definitely not since many have been redacted to prevent identifying Epstein survivors and because an unknown amount of legal activity remains in place. Is it all of the files that are required by the law that Congress passed? Also unclear. It just happened Friday morning and there’s a lot of files, so more information will doubtless come out in the near future.
Updated on February 1 to add some context and update the status of the bill.
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