WASHINGTON, D.C. — A partial government shutdown is dragging into yet another week — after a breakdown in Congress late last week left funding for the Department of Homeland Security in limbo.
With a lot of work still to be done, most lawmakers have left Washington and are back home for their two-week spring recess.
The gridlock on Capitol Hill is deepening after the Republican-controlled House rejected a bipartisan Senate plan to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security late last week.
“It seems like the Republicans in the House have a different perspective than those in the Senate about what they wanted out of this bill,” said Dr. Todd Belt, professor and director of the Political Management Master’s Program at George Washington University. “Of course, the real big-ticket item that the Senate was willing to give up was the SAVE Act on voting that they had attached to it. And, of course, the Democrats gave up — or at least punted down the road — on the ICE funding. And that just wasn’t good enough for members of the Freedom Caucus who met with Speaker Johnson last Friday.”
Thursday evening — and into the early hours of Friday — the Senate unanimously passed a measure to restore DHS funding — but without money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
However, ICE and CBP are already operating with additional funds from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
By Friday, conservative hardliners in the House presented their concerns with the Senate’s plan to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Republican leaders. GOP leaders ultimately rejected the Senate’s bill — opting instead to run a short-term extension, keeping DHS at current funding levels through late May.
“It shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that we would not be able to do that. We’re not going to split apart two of the most important agencies in the government and leave them hanging like that,” said Speaker Johnson.
It was a public rejection of the bipartisan Senate deal from one night earlier, and a rejection that was backed by President Donald Trump.
“It’s a shame, they should really just go to a filibuster. They should terminate the filibuster,” said Trump over the weekend. “I think the Senate is playing it too soft.”
Senate Democrats responded to the House’s short-term measure, calling it dead on arrival once received by the upper chamber.
“You had a deal here where both sides were going away with something they didn’t get. Democrats weren’t getting the changes to ICE that they wanted and the Republicans weren’t getting the changes to the voting regulations that they wanted. And then it went to the House and it all fell apart,” said Belt. “For the most part, I believe that the Speaker did not want to put a bill on the floor that was going to get mostly votes from the other party.”
However, long TSA lines- that have become the paramount issue in the ongoing DHS funding battle- are finally starting to subside in several airports. For a few weeks, several major airports saw hours-long security screening lines. But now, many TSA agents are finally starting to get paid for the first time in weeks, following an order last week by President Trump.
“I think these Republicans got bailed out by the president when he said he was going to use the DHS money that ‘has a reasonable nexus with TSA’ — is how it’s worded. Take that money and transfer it over to the TSA employees and that helps kick the can down the road a little bit,” said Belt.
With no agreement in sight — and lawmakers now away for spring recess — there is no clear timeline on just how long the partial shutdown could last.
“This has the probability of going on as long as Donald Trump can find other pools of money that he can backfill for the TSA,” Belt added.
We’re told that the dollars being used in the president’s order to pay TSA are from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Sources say the dollars were diverted from other components of DHS to help pay TSA agents.
We reached out to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on how much money is being set aside for TSA, and how long it can last. This story will be updated with their response.
