Slotkin flip-flops on DHS funding day after Michigan synagogue terror attack

Democrat Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) now says that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should be funded just one day after she voted against funding the agency while the government is still in a partial shutdown. The reversal from Slotkin also comes after a Lebanese man plowed a truck into a synagogue in Michigan and opened fire. He was killed by a security guard.

Slotkin said, "Certainly, we need to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and we need, in my view, to cut away all the conversation on ICE, which is its own conversation from all the core mission of the Department of Homeland Security. But they're essential."

The message from Slotkin comes just one day after she voted to keep DHS unfunded in the partial government shutdown that has been impacting DHS. Democratic lawmakers have been holding up DHS funding, pointing to the practices of ICE as their main qualms.

The motion to proceed on a bill that would fund DHS failed to get enough votes to pass in the Senate, failing with a vote of 51 to 46. Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) was the only Democrat that voted with the GOP to fund DHS. The motion needed 60 votes to pass and it was the fourth time the Senate has brought the issue up for a vote on the floor.

Without funding to DHS, TSA agents have now missed their first paycheck since the shutdown began. The impact of the shutdown has been seen across the country at airports, where lines to go through TSA have grown very long.

Additionally, a synagogue in Michigan was attacked by an immigrant from Lebanon on Thursday, the same day that Slotkin voted against funding DHS.

"The tragic attack on Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan was carried out by Ayman Mohamad Ghazali," DHS said. "He was born in Lebanon on January 4, 1985. He entered the United States on May 10, 2011 at Detroit Metropolitan International Airport on an IR1 immigrant visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen after alien relative and fiancé petitions filed in December 2009 were approved in April 2010. He applied for naturalization on October 20, 2015 and was granted U.S. citizenship on February 5, 2016 under the Obama administration."