Deal to reopen DHS sputters on Capitol Hill as anxiety in both parties spikes | CNN Politics

The latest push to reopen the Department of Homeland Security is sputtering on Capitol Hill, with frustrations so high that some rank-and-file lawmakers in both parties are privately meeting on their own to try to salvage talks. Just a day earlier, Senate GOP leaders believed they’d found a compromise that would reopen the shuttered DHS by this weekend. But that plan — which would withhold money for federal immigration enforcement but without any policy changes — has fallen flat in both parties, leaving President Donald Trump and GOP leaders with no clear path to end the nearly 40-day stalemate before Congress leaves in two days for a two-week recess. And with Democrats, too, rejecting the strategy, an uncharacteristically downbeat Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that it felt that talks were “going in circles” – signaling the impasse could go on for much longer. Meanwhile, a leading Senate negotiator, GOP Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, huddled with several House Democratic centrists on Wednesday morning in a frantic attempt to salvage talks and keep both parties at the table for a deal, according to multiple people familiar with the meeting. Britt, as she