The House of Representatives has approved a temporary funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but the 43-day shutdown shows no sign of ending soon and could stretch on for weeks.
According to Fox News, the House passed a two-month extension to fund DHS, a measure that is widely viewed as doomed in the Senate, where any spending bill must clear a 60-vote threshold and therefore secure support from at least some Democrats. That reality has not deterred House Republican leaders, who insist that rejecting the Senates earlier bipartisan deal and advancing their own DHS proposal is the responsible path forward, particularly on border security and immigration enforcement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., made clear that conservatives will not accept a piecemeal approach that leaves key security agencies exposed. "We're not going to split apart two of the most important agencies in the government and leave them hanging like that," Johnson told reporters as he left the Capitol on Friday night. "We just couldn't do it."
Johnson also underscored that Republicans will not sign onto any arrangement that weakens border enforcement or rewards the Biden administrations lax immigration policies. "House Republicans will have no part in reopening the border and stopping illegal immigration enforcement," he said earlier Friday on "The Ingraham Angle," blasting the Senate-passed deal for failing to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and parts of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). That Senate framework, favored by Democrats, would have left critical enforcement tools underfunded at a time when the southern border remains under historic strain.
Despite the Houses aggressive push, the Republican-led effort to pressure the Senate into returning to Washington and taking up the House bill appears unlikely to succeed. Senators left town after approving their own DHS funding measure in the early hours of Friday, and many have already departed on overseas congressional delegations for a two-week Easter recess.
A GOP aide, reflecting frustration with the House strategy, argued that the simplest resolution is for the House to accept the Senates earlier work product. "The easiest way to end this shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate-passed bill," the aide told Fox News Digital. "We know the Democrats are not going to support a CR, in fact the Senate tried to pass CRs for the last 40 days and Dems have blocked Every. Single. One," the aide added, highlighting Democratic resistance to short-term extensions that do not include their preferred policy concessions.
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain, R-Mich., criticized the Senate for leaving town while DHS employees go unpaid. "I would suggest that the Senate does come back and at least take a vote," McClain said Friday. "That is what they were elected to do. So they're going to stay out on recess for two weeks and not come back while people don't get paid. That's pretty sad."
Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas, joined the chorus, calling on the Senate to return "immediately" to consider the House-passed measure. Yet House lawmakers themselves are also scheduled for a two-week recess, underscoring the broader dysfunction in Washington as both chambers trade blame while federal workers bear the brunt of the stalemate.
The people most directly affected by the impasse are the tens of thousands of DHS employees who continue to work without pay. President Donald Trump moved Friday to ease the burden on Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents by issuing executive action directing DHS to pay those employees using existing funds, a step that bypasses congressional gridlock to protect front-line security personnel.
Roughly 50,000 TSA agents have already missed two full paychecks during the shutdown, prompting hundreds to resign and leaving many others struggling with mounting bills and financial uncertainty. The presidents intervention is expected to reduce the long lines and delays at airport security checkpoints, though senior officials warn that more than 500 agents have already quit during the funding lapse, raising concerns about long-term staffing and morale.
Other DHS components, however, remain exposed, with no immediate relief in sight. Personnel at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, and certain support staff at ICE and CBP will continue to have their paychecks withheld until Congress restores full departmental funding.
McClain stressed that basic fairness demands action from the Senate, which she says is failing to meet its constitutional responsibilities. "Anybody who shows up to work deserves to get a paycheck, and the Senate needs to come back and at least do their job," she told Fox News on Friday, echoing a broader conservative critique that Democrats are more focused on political leverage than on the livelihoods of federal workers.
Democrats, for their part, are preparing to spend the coming weeks pinning the blame squarely on Republicans after Johnson rejected the Senates bipartisan deal. "We're here dealing with a partisan spending bill that the Senate has already indicated is dead on arrival," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said on the House floor Friday. "And so Republicans have taken the decision to own this shutdown decisively. There is no doubt."
The House-passed DHS measure is a short-term, "clean" funding patch, free of partisan policy riders, a fact that undercuts Democratic claims that Republicans are using the shutdown to force ideological provisions. Trump, however, came out against the bill in an interview with Fox News, signaling that many conservatives remain wary of any temporary fix that fails to secure meaningful border and immigration reforms.
Notably, the bill omits the suite of changes Democrats have been demanding for six weeks to curb immigration enforcement, including tighter warrant requirements and bans on agents wearing masks. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who has repeatedly warned that "nobody wins in a shutdown," suggested that Democrats overplayed their hand by refusing to fund enforcement agencies earlier in the standoff.
"I mean, I think that ship has sailed, and they kind of kissed that opportunity goodbye by failing to provide funding for those agencies," Thune said, underscoring a central conservative argument: Democrats insistence on weakening enforcement has backfired, leaving them with fewer options and less leverage as the shutdown drags on and public frustration grows.
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