Hours before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, the House passed legislation that would require the detention of undocumented migrants charged with theft or burglary.

The Laken Riley Act, named after a Georgia nursing student allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant, passed 251-170 with 37 Democrats in support.

The measure would also empower state attorneys general to sue the federal government if they can show their states are being harmed through failure to enforce national immigration policies. And it comes as recent polling shows Americans see immigration as the most important issue facing the U.S.

“Republicans will not stand for the release of dangerous criminals into our communities,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on “Fox News” on Wednesday.

The measure’s sponsor, Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), invited Riley’s parents to the State of the Union but “they have chosen to stay home as they grieve the loss of their daughter,” he posted Wednesday.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said the measure had improved since its inception, but that it faced a certain death in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“[It’s] still not great,” Roy said, arguing the bill remains too weak. “But, you know, we can try to move something — it’ll die in the Senate.”

Leading Democrats continued to criticize the effort. “This is just a totally cynical and disgusting attempt to exploit this tragedy to score cheap political points in an election year,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), ranking member of the Rules Committee.

“House Republicans have turned this tragedy into a partisan attack on immigrant communities. This is a time to bring the community together, not tear them apart. These partisan policies fuel anti-immigrant hate, increase fear in immigrant communities, and make it more difficult for law enforcement to form the relationships necessary to prevent crime in our communities,” Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) said in a statement to POLITICO.

Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

The House-passed, six-bill government funding package is now in the hands of the Senate, where there’s a time crunch to get it passed before Friday night’s shutdown deadline.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer got the procedural ball rolling Wednesday night. But the Senate’s well-known timing games are expected to play out before final votes to send the six bills to the president.

“We’re working to get this done as quickly as we can,” Schumer said Wednesday.

To fast-track action on the $459 billion measure before the weekend, all 100 senators would have to agree to speed up consideration and vote. Republicans are likely to demand amendment votes in exchange for that fast-track process. (Though those proposals, which aren’t public yet, are unlikely to succeed.)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a frequent naysayer to time agreements, said Wednesday he hasn’t yet decided if he’ll be calling for additional votes before final passage.

Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.

The House approved a six-bill government funding package on Wednesday, sending the bill to the Senate with little time to spare before yet another government shutdown deadline.

The upper chamber must now lock down an agreement to speed up votes on the $459 billion measure before the weekend, which requires consent from all 100 senators. Republicans will likely demand a number of amendment votes in exchange, though none are expected to succeed.

Facing heat from his right flank, Speaker Mike Johnson relied on robust support from Democrats to pass the package in a 339-85 vote. He managed to still secure backing from a majority of the House GOP, a muted win for the speaker as conservatives grumble about his tendency to heavily lean on Democrats to pass major legislation. Ultimately, 132 Republicans supported the measure, while 207 Democrats voted in favor of the bill.

Congress is now halfway to sending a half-dozen annual spending bills to President Joe Biden’s desk, with a Saturday shutdown deadline looming. It’s the first real legislative progress lawmakers have made toward funding the government for the fiscal year that began more than five months ago, during an appropriations cycle primarily delayed by House Republican infighting.

And another deadline is fast approaching. Congressional leaders have until March 22 to clear another six spending bills that present an indisputably bigger challenge, comprising about 70 percent of the federal discretionary budget, including the Pentagon and health, labor and education programs.

The six-bill bundle passed Wednesday would fund more than a dozen federal departments and independent agencies that handle transportation, energy, housing, agriculture and veterans programs. Congressional leaders unveiled the measure on Sunday after weeks of negotiating and sparring over policy provisions, with Johnson under enormous pressure to deliver GOP wins.

In a floor speech, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pledged to start moving the package in the upper chamber immediately.

“It took a lot of bipartisan cooperation to reach this agreement on these six appropriations bills,” he said. “Now it will take more bipartisan cooperation to finish them.”

During a press conference Wednesday to rail on earmarks included in the bills, Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Rick Scott of Florida, Roger Marshall of Kansas and Mike Braun of Indiana said they’ll be pushing for some amendment votes once the funding package reaches the Senate.

“The only way you get an amendment vote is to be a pain in the butt,” Scott said.

Frequent contrarian Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that he hadn’t decided whether he will demand amendment votes to the funding package.

With little extra non-defense funding to work with for the current fiscal year, the measure keeps spending levels mostly stagnant at agencies like the Agriculture Department and the FDA. The bills funding the departments of Transportation and Energy would see small budget increases, while agencies like the Interior Department, the EPA, the Justice Department and the National Science Foundation are set to see some cuts.

The White House urged “swift passage” of the bill in a statement on Tuesday, noting that it “represents a compromise and neither side got everything it wanted, but it would prevent a damaging shutdown of several key agencies, protect key priorities and make progress for the American people.”

Democrats are lauding a $1 billion boost for a nutrition assistance program for moms and babies, known as WIC, defeating a Republican push to only provide that funding if they got a pilot program aimed at restricting SNAP food aid purchases.

And Republicans are championing a policy provision that would preserve gun rights for military veterans who are unable to manage their VA benefits or finances. However, the Senate had already adopted those protections as an amendment last fall with support from Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Angus King (I-Maine).

There is some last-minute drama over that rider and other provisions in the bill, though none are expected to imperil passage. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a senior appropriator who oversees the complicated Homeland Security spending bill, is already vowing to oppose the funding package over the VA gun policy provision, arguing that he can’t support the rider “with this many lives in the balance.”

Democrats have worried the provision could potentially contribute to more gun violence, deaths and veteran suicides. Murphy said he unsuccessfully fought to have it stripped out, arguing this concerns “very, very mentally ill veterans.”

And Pennsylvania’s two Democratic senators on Wednesday pulled support for a $1 million earmark for a LGBTQ+ community center in Philadelphia, amid a broader partisan standoff over steering federal cash to programs for LGBTQ+ people.

The Senate’s top tax writers clashed Wednesday over who knows what when it comes to a pending tax agreement now teetering in the chamber.

The contretemps began when Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) groused to reporters that Republicans’ demands for changes to the package remain hazy, even at this late date, calling them an “amorphous smorgasbord” of proposals.

“We don’t have a list of what amendments they would like” and “we still don’t have a description of the process they would like,” Wyden said.

Moments later, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) walked by.

Told of Wyden’s complaints, he said: “They know exactly what I want.”

“They know the issues — they know them very well. There’s nothing amorphous about it.”

Responded Wyden: “If there is somewhere where there is a piece of paper with specifics, I’m very interested in seeing it.”

The back-and-forth suggests an agreement to end what’s become a protracted dispute over the legislation — which passed the House with overwhelming support in January — is not imminent. It would expand the child tax credit as well as a trio of business tax breaks, among other changes.

Democrats had once hoped to get the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk before the beginning of the tax season. Now, Wyden say he hopes they can move it by the end of filing season in April.

Crapo has publicly identified some of the changes his side wants, including dropping language that would allow people claiming the child credit to use previous year’s income to calculate the benefit.

He also said he wants to address a glitch dealing with “catch-up” retirement contributions and consider some traditional tax extenders. Many Democrats see the plan as a finished product and are reluctant to reopen negotiations, fearing new rounds of bartering could sink the package.

Many observers are now watching to see if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will try to force the issue by attempting to bring the plan to the chamber floor. Wyden said he’s been discussing that with Schumer but declined to discuss specifics.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, the lead author of new bipartisan legislation directed at TikTok, said that the bill isn’t intended to ban the popular app, but to disconnect it from China’s influence by forcing Beijing-based owner ByteDance to sell it — and is written to clear legal hurdles that have stalled previous efforts.

“This is not a ban. Think of this as a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process,” Gallagher (R-Wis.) said at a press conference Wednesday discussing the bill, which gained momentum Tuesday night with backing from the White House.

Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) — the chair and ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party — introduced the measure on Tuesday. It would force the divestiture of TikTok over claims its owner, ByteDance, has ties with the Chinese Communist Party. If the sale doesn’t happen within about six months, the bill calls for the app to be blocked on U.S. app stores and websites.

Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, disputed Gallagher’s claims the bill wasn’t a TikTok ban bill. “They can try to dress it up however they want, but this is a bill to ban Tiktok and give unprecedented power to take apps off your phone,” he told POLITICO. He also said ByteDance has no ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

White House backing: The legislation got the endorsement of the Biden administration Tuesday night, with a statement from the NSC spokesperson saying it was “an important and welcome step” to address the risks that ByteDance’s ownership poses to Americans’ sensitive data and national security.

Gallagher told reporters he thinks the bill has a path forward and that he has been working with the administration for six months to ensure the legislation holds up constitutionally. He also said the bill is his top priority during his last few months before retiring from Congress.

He said he’s learned from past mistakes in failed legislation last year that sought to ban TikTok outright, as well as the effort by former President Donald Trump to ban the app, which was blocked by a judge for exceeding his legal authority.

Avoiding ‘legal buzzsaw’: The legislation gives the president authority — after notifying Congress — to require divestment of an app if it is determined to be controlled by a foreign adversary, or face a ban on U.S.-based app stores or web hosting sites.

The bill claims ByteDance fits this criteria. It only applies to apps controlled by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, according to a Select Committee aide.

“It’s an executive/legislative collaboration that draws upon not only previous failed efforts legislatively, but also the experience of the Trump executive order, which did run into a legal buzzsaw,” Gallagher said.

One hurdle to app bans is the 1988 Berman Amendment, which prohibits the president from banning “informational materials” internationally. Gallagher said he didn’t expect the Berman Amendment to be an issue for his bill. “We had outside legal analysis of that and we had executive branch analysis of that,” he said, “and I think we’re beyond that concern.”

TBD on Senate: Gallagher told reporters he’s gotten “a lot of outreach from senators” after they introduced the bill.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll have a really good core group of support from the Senate,” he said.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the lead Senate author of the RESTRICT Act, which would give the administration more authority to block apps owned by a foreign adversary, in part by amending the Berman Amendment, said in a statement that he’s still reviewing the bill.

Warner said he still has concerns about the constitutionality of an approach that names specific companies, like ByteDance.

Gallagher said the bill has undergone constitutional legal scrutiny and doesn’t violate the Constitution’s ban on “bills of attainder” that punish a specific individual person or group of people.

Lawmakers have stripped a $1 million earmark for a LGBTQ+ community center in Philadelphia from the funding package Congress is expected to clear this week.

Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-Pa.) office, in a letter to appropriators, requested the funding be cut from the bill. But he said Wednesday that his staff had made the decision to pull the funding without his input, and implied that a conservative social media account, which accused the center of hosting sex parties, had played a part in the decision.

“I wasn’t part of that decision. It wasn’t my personal decision to do that,” he said in an interview. “I never realized that the Libs of TikTok should determine our priorities and what we’re going to support,” referencing a notorious conservative account.

Libs of TikTok posted March 5 that the funding would help a center that promoted a forthcoming event for those interested in “BDSM, kink and fetish” and singled out Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Fetterman for supporting the funds.

Fetterman later added in a statement that his staff felt the choice was either to “pull it or watch it get stripped out, attacked by Republicans, and ultimately killed.” He added that he would continue to push for the funds in next year’s funding measures.

The last-minute nixing is the latest in a blistering eight-month feud over steering federal cash to programs that serve LGBTQ+ people. It started last summer when Democrats accused House Republicans of behaving like “terrorists” as they worked to strip millions of dollars lawmakers had already secured for projects in their districts.

Casey said in a brief interview Wednesday that “new information” obtained Tuesday caused him to yank his support.

“We made a decision upon receiving new information yesterday — and only yesterday — to not support the appropriation,” he told POLITICO, without elaborating on that new information. “We have new information that caused me to decide to pull support for the earmark.”

The funding for the William Way LGBTQ Community Center was included in the final earmark list top lawmakers released Sunday in rolling out the six-bill spending package the House is set to pass Wednesday afternoon. But that $1 million to renovate and expand the center is missing from the official list submitted for the Congressional Record.

The office of Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), a leading proponent of the funding, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

House Republicans were also successful in blocking other LGBTQ+ earmarks from the final funding bills, including a $970,000 project Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) initially got approved last summer for an LGBTQ+ housing program in her southeastern Pennsylvania district. GOP lawmakers also stripped out $850,000 for affordable housing units for LGBTQ+ seniors in Boston that Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) initially got approved.

Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.

A gun policy rider on a spending bill set to pass Congress this week is sparking partisan animosity, with Speaker Mike Johnson taking a victory lap during a closed-door House GOP meeting Wednesday and Democrats fuming — both publicly and privately.

The rider at issue preserves gun rights for military veterans who need Veterans Affairs support to manage their benefits. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a leading advocate for gun safety measures, said in a post on X that he would oppose the entire spending bill over the gun rider.

“This provision — which could result in 20,000 new seriously mentally ill individuals being able to buy guns each year — will be a death sentence for many,” Murphy wrote in a thread Wednesday morning. “It’s unacceptable this provision was pushed by Republicans. Democrats shouldn’t have acquiesced.”

During Wednesday morning’s private House GOP conference, Johnson touted Democrats’ opposition to the gun policy rider. It was also one of the main provisions he lauded in a list of the GOP victories when the package was released over the weekend.

Johnson read press reports to his conference, quoting Democrats who expressed “heartburn” about the gun rider and calling it the “largest rollback” for gun safety in the past three decades, according to a Republican in the room, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A version of the gun rider already passed the Senate last fall, with Democratic-aligned Sens. Angus King (Maine), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Jon Tester (Mont.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.) in support.

But Murphy wasn’t the only one fretting about the rider’s inclusion on Wednesday.

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) highlighted concerns about the language during a closed-door Democratic conference meeting, according to multiple people in the room. And Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) called it “the greatest rollback of the background checks system since it was created” during a brief interview on Tuesday.

Democrats did secure one policy victory on guns in the spending bill, however, securing a seven-year extension on banning so-called ghost guns, or homemade firearms and weapons without serial numbers that are difficult for law enforcement to trace.

Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.

Mitch McConnell is endorsing Donald Trump for president, a move that the Senate GOP leader made after Trump’s only main rival dropped out of the GOP primary.

Despite their nonexistent relationships over the past three years, McConnell has always maintained he would support the eventual Republican nominee — and Nikki Haley’s Wednesday suspension of her campaign unlocked McConnell’s formal endorsement. His decision to formally back Trump amounts to a detente, however involuntary, after a rocky three years between the two men.

It also illustrates that the two men may still need each other politically: McConnell is trying to take back the Senate majority for Republicans at the end of the year, while Trump is trying to win many of the same battleground states required to regain control of the chamber.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States,” McConnell said in a statement. “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

McConnell did not speak to Trump for three years after the former president tried to overturn his 2020 loss, and Trump sought to oust McConnell as GOP leader after the 2022 midterms. The two did not speak directly about the endorsement, which was negotiated by McConnell adviser Josh Holmes and Trump adviser Chris LaCivita, according to a person familiar with the matter.

McConnell announced last week that he would step down as GOP leader at the end of the current Congress but serve out the rest of his term as Kentucky senator. That means, if Trump wins the presidency in November, the job of steering Senate Republicans alongside the former president will fall to a new leader.

In his statement endorsing Trump, McConnell mentioned only what he sees as the highlights of their four years in office together, “including tax reform that supercharged our economy and a generational change of our federal judiciary — most importantly, the Supreme Court.”

McConnell’s move to deny former President Barack Obama a Supreme Court seat is credited by many conservatives with boosting Trump’s 2016 campaign. And their work together did flip the high court to what most see as a 6-3 conservative majority.

Still, after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, McConnell made no secret of his dim view of Trump’s conduct, judging him “practically and morally responsible” for the violent attack by the former president’s supporters. McConnell and most Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump at his second impeachment trial, with McConnell arguing that the Senate could not convict a former president but also declaring that “former presidents are not immune from being held accountable” by the legal system/

Publicly, McConnell seems to only be looking forward as he tries to flip the Senate into Republican hands. He said on Wednesday that looks “forward to the opportunity of switching from playing defense against the terrible policies the Biden administration has pursued to a sustained offense geared towards making a real difference in improving the lives of the American people.”