DHS spending fight hits a wall after tumultuous day: Five takeaways

The House and Senate both passed legislation on Friday to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and end one of the longest government shutdowns in the history of Congress — but not the same legislation.

For all the activity of the past 36 hours, the impasse over DHS is no closer to being broken and the parties appear as far apart as they were when the agency was first shut down on Feb. 14.

The sticking point, then and now, revolves around federal immigration enforcement in the wake of the fatal shootings of two American protestors in Minneapolis earlier in the year. 

The Senate bill, which was bipartisan and passed unanimously, reflected the Democrats’ demands to deny funding to enforcement operations while the parties haggle over policing reforms.

The House bill, crafted solely by Republicans, rejected that approach, funding the entire DHS — including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol — at current levels for eight weeks.

Here are five takeaways from a long day of events.

No end in sight for partial shutdown

The DHS stopgap measure is sure to be dead on arrival in the upper chamber, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has already opposed the legislation.

With both parties at an impasse and both chambers depargint Washington for a two-week recess, the 42-day partial shutdown is now guaranteed to break the record for the longest one in U.S. history, which lasted for 43 days last year.

And Americans likely won’t be relieved anytime soon, as Republicans insist on funding ICE and Democrats demand tougher rules governing the agency’s conduct. 

The pressure is on for both parties, as thousands of DHS employees work without pay. But that pressure was reduced enormously on Friday when President Trump signed an executive order that shifted funds to pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, who have been working without pay since the partial shutdown began on Feb. 14. 

During the impasse, many TSA employees have called in sick — or quit their jobs altogether — creating chaotic scenes at airports around the country, which have been plagued by long security lines and massive delays. 

GOP divisions on display

Republicans voted en masse in favor of the House stopgap bill on Friday night, but the outward show of unity disguised the underlying tensions within both the GOP conference and the party more broadly. 

Conservative Republicans, led by the far-right Freedom Caucus, were successful in pushing GOP leaders to provide more funding to ICE and CBP. But the decision to reject the Senate agreement — which was sponsored by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and passed unanimously through the upper chamber — stirred plenty of concern among more moderate GOP lawmakers, who now fear that Republicans are the clear owners of the shutdown in the eyes of voters.

The decision to break from the Senate also created clear strains in relations between the chambers. While Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sought to place the blame on Democrats, it was Thune who endorsed the bill and brought it to the Senate floor. And Johnson broadcast his frustrations with the Senate when he announced his rejection of their bill. 

“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” Johnson said. “I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill.”

Freedom Caucus flexes muscles

The far-right House Freedom Caucus, known for defying party leadership, held firm in this fight.

The episode underscored just how fragile Johnson’s razor-thin margin is, and how much leverage a small bloc of lawmakers can wield.

The hard-line conservatives bashed the Senate deal early Friday morning, arguing that they want full funding for Border Patrol and ICE, as well as voter ID requirements, in the bill.

“The only thing we’re going to support is adding that funding into the bill, adding voter ID, sending it back to the Senate, make them come back in and do their work. The bottom line is, this deal is bad for America,” House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) told reporters.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the caucus’s policy chair and a member of the influential House Rules Committee, said they would not advance the Senate bill as is through a rule.

In the end, the hard-line conservatives got what they wanted: a bill that would fully fund DHS, even if it never becomes law.

Democrats watch win slips away

Democrats appeared poised to notch a victory in the fight — but the rug was pulled out from under them.

In the Senate, they had repeatedly sought unanimous consent to pass bills that would fund every agency under DHS except ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

In the House, they championed a bill, sponsored by Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), that would do much the same. House Democrats had even launched a discharge petition aimed at forcing a floor vote on the bill, despite the effort being a long shot since it would have needed the backing of four Republicans.

The Senate bill strayed from DeLauro’s bill in certain respects, but the central feature — divorcing immigration enforcement funding from the rest of DHS — was close enough that Democrats were eager to help pass it and claim a victory in funding the TSA and easing the congestion at the nation’s airports.

Some members were even prepared to cross the line and help Republicans pass a rule, if needed, that would have teed up a debate and a final vote on the Senate measure — an extraordinary move, given that rule votes are typically seen as a test of party loyalty.

Johnson’s decision to reject the Senate bill meant they never got the chance. 

“House Republicans had the easiest possible path to put people first. Vote for a bill that every Senate Republican voted for this morning. All they had to do was get out of the way, and they couldn’t bring themselves to do it,” House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said on the House floor. “This is a battle between common sense and crazy.”

Trump, known for striking deals and flexing his sway over Republicans in Congress, stayed noticeably silent throughout most of the fight.

The president’s silence marks a notable departure from his past approach, where he’d either pressure Republicans to fall in line or invite members to the White House to negotiate behind the scenes.

But Trump’s silence also gave Johnson a chance to assert his authority, rejecting Thune’s Senate bill and crafting a strategy that fully funded ICE — and wouldn’t alienate the conservatives who reflect the party’s base voters. 

When the president finally did weigh in, it was to criticize the Senate bill. 

“In my opinion, you can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund ICE,” he told Fox News.

The comments are sure to infuriate the Senate Republicans who thought they had found a sweet spot to reopen DHS.  

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