A government funding bill heads to the House, and the Florida Board of Governors is considering a push to ban the hire of H-1B workers in statewide faculty positions for one year.

The Senate voted Friday to fund most of the government through the end of September after President Donald Trump made a deal with Democrats to carve out Homeland Security funding and allow Congress to debate new restrictions on federal immigration raids across the country.

With a weekend shutdown looming, Trump made the rare deal with Senate Democrats on Thursday in the wake of the deaths of two protesters at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis. Under the agreement, the Homeland Security money will continue at current levels for two weeks while lawmakers consider Democratic demands to unmask agents, require more warrants and allow local authorities to help investigate any incidents.

The bill passed in a 71-29 vote. It will now head to the House, which is not due back until Monday. That means the government could be in a partial shutdown temporarily over the weekend until they pass it.

As lawmakers in both parties called for investigations into the fatal shootings by federal agents, Trump said he didn’t want a shutdown and encouraged members of both parties to cast a “much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ vote.”

The president’s concessions to Democrats prompted pushback from some Senate Republicans, delaying the final votes and providing a preview of the coming debate over the next two weeks. In a fiery floor speech, Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned that Republicans should not give away too much.

“To the Republican party, where have you been?” Graham said, adding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Border Patrol agents have been “slandered and smeared.”

Still, some Republicans said they believe that changes to ICE’s operations were necessary, even as they were unlikely to agree to all of the Democrats’ requests.

“I think the last couple of days have been an improvement,” said Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. “I think the rhetoric has been dialed down a little bit, in Minnesota.”

Florida Bill of Governors advance plan to ban faculty H-1B hiring for one year

The Florida Board of Governors moved one step closer Thursday to a year-long ban on state colleges and universities hiring faculty members who are in the United States on H-1B visas.

Those visas allow for the hire of educated foreign professionals for “specialty” occupations that are harder to fill with U.S. workers.

“The goal here is not to preclude the ability to hire people that are needed in certain areas. Certainly, there are physician shortages and there’s needs, particularly in high acuity specialities in healthcare and medicine. And certainly there’s issues in certain STEM areas like engineering. So it’s understood. And the goal here is to collect information, focus and get the information we need to then make reasonable policy decisions about the use of this program. There are other visa programs, we’re not stopping the use of those. It’s just this one program where we need to gather more information,” Florida Board of Governors Chair Alan Levine said.

Last October, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he wanted to pull the plug on the use of those visas in the higher education system, arguing that they took opportunities from Floridians.

Some members of the board of governors did voice concern about what a pause would do to university staffing …

“Top tier candidates are not going to pause their careers to wait on a single state. When Florida removes itself from consideration for an entire hiring cycle, those candidates accept offers elsewhere and do not return,” Florida Board of Governors Member Carson Dale said.

The proposed changes to hiring rules will now be posted on the board of governors’ website for two weeks for public comment. They could be brought back before the board at a future meeting for final approval.