The Senate pushed its partial Department of Homeland Security funding bill forward on Thursday, but the measure hit a wall of resistance from House Republicans who called the deal a capitulation, and openly questioned Speaker Mike Johnson's leadership for endorsing it.
The standoff has now stretched to 48 days, making it the longest DHS shutdown on record. And with the House not scheduled to return until April 14, federal employees at the department continue reporting to work without pay while lawmakers trade blame from opposite ends of the Capitol.
At the center of the fight is a two-track approach endorsed by Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday. Under the plan, the Senate's partial DHS bill would pass first, funding most of the department. Funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, the agencies at the tip of the border enforcement spear, would come later through a party-line reconciliation package. One senior GOP aide, as Fox News Digital reported, described the arrangement bluntly as a "s*** sandwich."
The speaker's pivot came just days after he had rejected the Senate's approach. That whiplash did not go unnoticed. During a members-only call Thursday afternoon, lawmakers railed against Johnson. One source familiar with the call said plainly: "People are mad at Johnson." Another described "a lot of frustration" and said the shift "does feel like whiplash."
A person familiar with the call went further, saying members were "not willing to vote for anything that defunds law enforcement absent tangible action from Senate. Thune should call Senate back today."
The breadth of the opposition is notable. The Washington Times reported that Rep. Nick LaLota said a few dozen House Republicans, spanning moderates and hard-line conservatives, spoke against the Senate plan on a GOP conference call. LaLota put it in plain terms: "The Senate chickened out."
Johnson himself, in an earlier moment, had called the Senate plan a "joke." He told reporters, "I have to protect the House, and I have to protect the American people." But his subsequent reversal undercut that posture and gave critics on both sides of the aisle ammunition.
The pattern is familiar. Johnson has struggled repeatedly to hold his razor-thin majority together on major votes, a dynamic that has only intensified as the House Republican margin has shrunk with recent defections.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer seized the moment, demanding House Republicans take up the bill immediately and accusing them of owning "the longest government shutdown in history." Schumer said the Senate had "did its work twice to fund key parts of DHS without funding the lawlessness of ICE and Border Patrol."
That framing tells you everything about the Democratic position. Schumer called ICE and CBP operations "lawlessness", a revealing choice of words for agencies enforcing immigration law. Democrats blocked those agencies from the partial funding bill and then blamed Republicans for the resulting impasse.
Schumer added: "The deep division and dysfunction among House Republicans is needlessly extending the DHS shutdown and hurting federal workers who are missing another paycheck."
The charge of dysfunction stings because it contains a grain of truth. But the underlying cause is not Republican disarray, it is a genuine policy disagreement about whether Congress should fund the border enforcement agencies Democrats deliberately excluded from the bill. House conservatives are right to insist that a DHS funding bill that carves out ICE and CBP is not a serious DHS funding bill. It is a political maneuver designed to force Republicans into an ugly choice.
President Trump, for his part, moved to address the most immediate human cost of the standoff. In a post on Truth Social, he announced plans to sign an executive order paying all DHS employees working without pay during the shutdown.
"Because the Democrats are fully and 100% committed to the Radical Left Policy of Open Borders and Zero Immigration Enforcement (which will hopefully cost them dearly in the Midterms!), allowing Murderers and Criminals of all types into our Country, totally unchecked and unvetted, I will soon sign an order to pay ALL of the incredible employees at the Department of Homeland Security."
It remains unclear when that order will be signed or through what legal mechanism it will operate. But the move shifts the political calculus. If DHS workers get paid, the pressure on House Republicans to accept a deal they consider inadequate diminishes considerably.
That pressure had been the Democrats' primary leverage. Without it, the case for rushing the Senate's partial bill through the House weakens, and the argument for waiting until reconciliation can fund ICE and CBP grows stronger.
House lawmakers could have used the same fast-track process Thursday that the Senate employed. They chose not to. Leadership was not expected to ask members to return to Washington early, leaving the next possible action date as April 14.
If Johnson lacks conference-wide support for the Senate bill, and Thursday's call suggests he does, he could be forced to bring it to the floor under suspension of House rules. That path requires a two-thirds majority, meaning Johnson would need significant Democratic votes to pass it. The prospect of relying on Democrats to pass a DHS bill that his own conference rejected is a politically treacherous one, echoing prior episodes where cross-party coalitions papered over internal GOP divisions.
Thune, speaking Thursday, acknowledged the uncertainty. "My assumption is, at some point, hopefully they'll move it," he said of the House. He added that the plan included "the understanding that we're going to come behind it with the Recon bill. I mean, I think this whole, where we are is just a regrettable place."
"Regrettable" is one word for it. House Republicans might use stronger ones.
The real issue is not procedural. It is strategic. Democrats carved ICE and CBP out of the funding bill on purpose. They want to isolate the agencies most associated with immigration enforcement and force Republicans to fund the rest of DHS without them. If Republicans comply, Democrats get to claim a win. If Republicans refuse, Democrats blame them for the shutdown.
House conservatives see through the trap. Their insistence on tangible Senate action on reconciliation before voting on the partial bill is not obstruction, it is leverage. Once the partial bill passes, the urgency to fund ICE and CBP through reconciliation drops. Promises from Senate leadership carry weight only if there is a mechanism to enforce them.
Johnson seemed to recognize this when he told Fox News that Republicans may have to do the "heavy lift" alone. He blamed Democrats for obstruction and said he had been in conversations with senators until nearly midnight, adding he could call House members back once something was worked out with the Senate.
But the gap between "working something out" and actually delivering a reconciliation package that funds border enforcement remains wide. And Johnson's credibility with his own conference has taken a hit. Members watched him reject the Senate deal, then accept it, then face a revolt, all within days. That kind of zigzag erodes trust, and earlier DHS funding controversies had already tested his standing.
One House Republican, speaking to the Washington Examiner, captured the mood: "It's more swamp crap leaving ICE & CBP isolated based on a promise."
The House sits empty until April 14. The Senate has done what it can, or what it is willing to do. Trump has signaled he will pay DHS workers in the interim. And House Republicans remain dug in, unwilling to accept a deal that funds most of the department while leaving the agencies enforcing immigration law out in the cold.
The open questions are significant. Will the Senate actually deliver on reconciliation? Will Johnson call members back early? Can he get the votes without Democratic help? And if he cannot, what does a suspension vote, requiring a two-thirds majority, look like for a speaker already under fire from his right flank?
The pattern of Republican defections on major votes has made every whip count an exercise in uncertainty. Johnson's margin for error is functionally zero.
House conservatives are not wrong to demand more than a promise before they vote. The question is whether their leverage holds, or whether the political cost of a prolonged shutdown forces their hand before the Senate delivers anything concrete.
When the other side designs a bill to fund everything except the agencies enforcing the law, the correct response is not gratitude. It is suspicion.
