Katie Britt, the precocious junior senator from Alabama, was recently handed a task seemingly designed to stretch her formidable talents. Senate Majority Leader John Thune had tapped her to secure a compromise on funding for the Department of Homeland Security amid a heated standoff with Democrats over ICE tactics. As the Republican chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, it was her bill to get through the Senate—and she likes being in the middle of thorny fights. But in the weeks after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota, this one was particularly difficult, and Democrats had no intention of giving ICE more money without major reforms.