WASHINGTON — The House narrowly cleared a $1.2 trillion spending package Tuesday with bipartisan support, effectively ending a four-day-old partial government shutdown despite a lingering battle over immigration enforcement policies.

President Donald Trump has promised to sign the five-bill spending package for fiscal 2026 “immediately.” The House cleared the package on a 217-214 vote, with 21 Democrats joining most Republicans in support, and 21 Republicans opposed. The Senate passed the measure last week by a vote of 71-29.

The twin votes signaled the completion of long-delayed appropriations for the fiscal year that began last October with one notable exception. Funding for the Homeland Security Department is set to expire on Feb. 13 after a decision to punt on a full-year spending bill for a department that has come under heavy criticism for its handling of an immigration crackdown that resulted in two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens last month.

Some lawmakers have already expressed doubts about being able to reach a compromise on immigration policy and pass a new Homeland Security bill by next week’s deadline. But passage of the five-bill package, while four months late, nonetheless ensures that all other federal agencies will have full funding through September.

“We’ve had a lot of folks who’ve worked hard,” said House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., just before the vote. “We may have some disagreements in the coming days – probably will, I’d be surprised if we don’t. But I know if we work hard and work through them we can get to a successful conclusion.”

The roughly $1.2 trillion package combines the annual Defense, Labor-HHS-Education, Financial Services, National Security-State and Transportation-HUD bills.

The measure rejects deep cuts sought by the White House and congressional Republicans to a slew of nondefense programs. It also includes some budget guardrails intended to check the president’s ability to downsize parts of government without congressional buy-in.

The bipartisan House vote masked the shaky state of the spending package just hours earlier, when Republicans struggled to unify to adopt a rule needed for floor debate on the measure.

Battle for the rule

Adoption of the rule required some last-minute arm-twisting from leadership after an intraparty struggle for voter ID legislation.

The vote to adopt the rule was 217-215, with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky joining all Democrats in dissent. But the vote had to be held open to persuade several reluctant Republicans to come on board.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Trump had to confront a growing revolt from within GOP ranks on Monday after a small group of lawmakers, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., threatened to derail the rule vote in a push for Senate action on voter ID legislation.

But Luna and the other lawmakers backed off after she and Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., met with Trump at the White House and received what they described as key assurances.

The conservatives were pushing for the inclusion of legislation requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote, known as the “SAVE America Act” or SAVE Act for short, in the funding package, which also includes a short-term Homeland Security funding extension through Feb. 13.

Luna said she was assured that the legislation would be passed in the Senate by forcing Democrats into what’s known as a “standing filibuster,” which would require them to hold the floor continuously to block the bill. Typically, the minority party can block a bill simply by telegraphing that 60 votes do not exist to advance the measure.

But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Tuesday he made no firm commitment on a standing filibuster.

“I made a commitment to have a conversation about it with our members and try and find out where the consensus of the Republican conference is,” Thune said.

He added that “we will have” a vote on the SAVE Act in the future, and that “any legislative vehicle that crosses the floor could be a candidate for an amendment vote.”

Rep. John W. Rose, R-Tenn., initially voted against the rule, writing on X that Thune “is already backtracking on what he reportedly told some House Republicans: that if we reopened the government, he’d keep his word and bring the SAVE Act to the floor.”

Rose, who is challenging Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., in their state’s gubernatorial primary, flipped his vote after a conversation with Johnson in the cloakroom off the House floor.

Rose said GOP leadership “addressed my concerns” on the voter ID bill, saying he secured “a promise of progress to come” on the legislation. “It’s not done yet,” he said.

Johnson said he didn’t make any promises to Rose in exchange for his vote.

“John is engaged in a tight race for the governorship of Tennessee, and he’s thoughtful about that, and he wants a fair fight there,” the speaker said. “So that’s what we discussed.”

The push for a party-line rule vote came after Democrats informed Republicans that they wouldn’t provide the votes to meet the two-thirds majority threshold for clearing the spending package under suspension of the rules, and they also wouldn’t lend any votes to the typically party-line rule vote, in part because the rule also tees up other legislation Democrats are opposed to for floor consideration.

Democrats have been split in both chambers over how to proceed with Homeland Security funding amid public uproar over the killings of two Americans by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis last month. While there’s agreement in the party on the need for policy changes, there’s also deep distrust among Democrats in backing a deal with the White House that would allow continued funding for the agency before securing those changes, even for just a few weeks.

Next 10 days

Lawmakers are skeptical of reaching a bipartisan deal on substantive changes to immigration policy by the Feb. 13 deadline, as leaders on both sides begin drawing lines in the funding battle.

Thune on Tuesday said the “very short timeframe” will prove challenging to overcome as lawmakers seek to reach a compromise.

“Anybody who knows this place knows it’s an impossibility, but hopefully there will be a sense of urgency around if there’s a path forward, what it might look like and what individual component pieces might be included,” Thune said. “But we’ve got people in very different places, as you know, on that.”

In remarks to reporters Tuesday, Johnson appeared to throw cold water on a push by Democrats for tighter warrant requirements for ICE. “We are never going to go along with adding an entirely new layer of judicial warrants, because it is unimplementable,” he argued.

Some have already floated the prospect of another short-term continuing resolution for Homeland Security next week.

Cole said during the Rules Committee hearing on the legislation Monday that he predicts a second extension for the agency this year. “I don’t think it will be settled in 10 days. I’d love to be wrong about that. We’ll probably be up here with some other short-term CR.”

But some conservatives are already peeved by the idea of splitting off the original full-year DHS funding bill from the package and are pushing for a yearlong stopgap measure if a deal isn’t reached by next week.

“If we can’t do it now, I’m not sure, if we put another two-week one out, we’re going to do it in the next two weeks,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., said Tuesday. “We should, at some point, just start talking about a full-year CR.”

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(Valerie Yurk, Aidan Quigley and Paul M. Krawzak contributed to this report.)

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