The House voted late Friday to stave off a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security for another week, narrowly averting a funding lapse for the agency that has become the battleground over President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

The vote was 357-60. The Senate approved the stopgap measure earlier Friday evening and it was signed by Obama minutes before the midnight deadline when the department’s funding was to expire.


The 11th-hour move came after dozens of House Republicans dealt a humiliating defeat to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders. Conservatives teamed up with Democrats to shoot down a Boehner-backed measure that would have funded DHS for three weeks.

Boehner’s allies are concerned after Friday’s setback that his critics inside the Republican Conference may try to oust him as speaker if — as expected — he puts a long-term DHS funding bill on the House floor next week. While Boehner shrugs off such speculation, close friends believe such a move is a real possibility.

“There is a lot of speculation about this,” said a GOP lawmaker who is close with Boehner. “People are watching for this very, very closely.”

Twenty-five Republicans voted against Boehner for speaker on the floor in early January, signaling his continued problems with his conservative hardliners. And Boehner’s allies believe that the earlier DHS debacle on Friday, when 52 Republicans voted against the three-week plan, was in part aimed at toppling the speaker.

One issue for Boehner’s GOP opponents — beyond his continued popularity with the vast majority of House Republicans — is who would succeed him. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) would seem like a natural choice, but he is close to Boehner and would never seek to replace him. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has strong ties to many members, yet that may not necessarily translate for support for speaker.

After those two men, there’s a large drop-off to the next tier of potential choices. That helps Boehner’s cause.

The drama over Boehner’s future came after a day of unexpected twists in the homeland security saga.

With just hours to spare until the department’s funding expired, House and Senate Democratic aides said they reached a “deal” with Republicans: House Democrats would provide the votes to pass a one-week funding extension. In return, Democrats said they secured an agreement that a vote would be allowed next week to fund DHS through September. That would happen as long as the Senate votes down a request to go into formal House-Senate negotiations on the DHS bill, which is expected on Monday.

“Your vote tonight will assure that we will vote for full funding next week,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote to Democrats in a letter shortly before the measure was approved.

But Republicans denied a formal deal with Pelosi. “It’s her opinion, there is no agreement,” said Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman.

Boehner held discussions with both Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as the day unfolded Friday.

The vote earlier in the afternoon against the three-week measure was the latest and perhaps most stinging repudiation of Boehner and his leadership team, who have struggled repeatedly to corral rank-and-file Republicans against the backdrop of legislative crisis. The Ohio Republican has been caught between conservatives demanding that he use the DHS issue to block Obama’s executive actions on immigration and avoiding a funding lapse of the anti-terrorism agency.

For much of the day, Boehner and other GOP leaders had been scrambling to lock down support ahead of the vote, which was delayed in the afternoon to give them more time to line up backing for the bill. Just before 1 p.m., the House recessed. Senior GOP aides claimed they were on the brink of rounding up enough backing to approve the stopgap bill coupled with a motion to enter formal negotiations with the Senate. The aim had been to secure enough support to ensure that no Democrats were needed to bring the bill across the finish line.

Instead, 52 Republicans voted against the measure — after House leaders kept the vote open for nearly an hour. Only 12 Democrats ultimately voted in favor of the funding bill, but they initially held their votes close to the vest in a strategy to force the GOP to cough up their own votes.

“It’s quite a vote,” said Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), one of the GOP “no” votes and a frequent thorn in the side of leadership. “This has not been a very good showing for the leadership at all.”

Rep. Stevan Pearce (R-N.M.), who voted against the short-term measure, said his vote rejecting the measure was a sign that he was sick of the “brinksmanship” over DHS funding that began weeks ago. He noted that the House sent over legislation to the Senate last month, and senators were just now sending over their own version of DHS legislation.

“It’s a protest vote on the way the whole thing is working,” he said shortly after the failed vote. “It is not a way to govern. What are we going to do 30 days from now that’s different?”

With the House disarray, the Obama administration began preparing for a potential funding lapse. Obama met with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan and other members of his senior team, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

Obama also called Pelosi and Reid for updates, Earnest said in a statement.

One problem for leadership in the first vote had been that conservatives believed Boehner, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) would still lack a plan to fund DHS when money ran out in three weeks. The vote was a test for Scalise in particular, since he had run on his ability to persuade conservatives to support leadership’s priorities.

“I’ve done all my work,” said Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), who chairs the subcommittee that oversees DHS funding. “It failed.”

House Democrats — whose leadership was furiously whipping against the three-week DHS bill — had their own drama.

Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) decided to support the stopgap measure, but was facing pressure from both Democratic leaders and fellow Congressional Black Caucus members to withdraw his backing for the bill. His Atlanta-based district is home to many Transportation Security Administration workers, who would either be furloughed or forced to work without pay during a DHS shutdown.

At one point during the vote, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) began yelling at Scott in the Speaker’s lobby off the House floor over his support.

“David, you are making a mistake,” Brown yelled. “The strength of the wolf is in the pack. You don’t need to vote with those damn Republicans. You need to stop them now.”

Compared to the raucous House, the Republican-controlled Senate was tame.

On a 68-31 vote, it passed a funding bill for DHS that would run through the end of September, free of provisions to undo Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Separately, the Republican-controlled Senate tried to open debate on a bill by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would override the action Obama issued in November. But that measure was blocked by mostly all Democrats.

Reid said in a statement after the late afternoon vote that House Republicans should “immediately” pass the DHS funding legislation that passed earlier Friday.

“The Republican Congress has shown that it simply cannot govern,” Reid said. “Two months into the Republican Congress, we are already staring a Homeland Security shutdown square in the face, even as terrorists around the world threaten to strike America.”

Lauren French and Jake Sherman contributed to this report.