Senior Republican senators said they expected Congress will avoid a shutdown over the Department of Homeland Security, which faces a partial shutdown on Friday amid a GOP push to roll back President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson pressed lawmakers to resolve the deadlock, expressing frustration at what he described as finger-pointing between House and Senate lawmakers over who is to blame if Congress fails to enact a spending bill to keep the department running.
"First of all, it's absurd that we're even having this conversation about Congress's inability to fund homeland security in these challenging times," Johnson said on CNN's "State of the Union." In the same interview he also expressed concern about a Somali-based Islamist militant group's threats to Western malls, including the Mall of America in Minnesota.