Lawmakers have left Washington during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, leaving the Department of Homeland Security unfunded as pressure mounts on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to bring senators back.
With both the Senate and the House on a two-week recess to observe Passover and Easter, the partial government shutdown has become the longest in history, dragging on for more than 40 days.
The impasse stems from a split between the House and Senate over how to fund the DHS, with Senate leaders backing a narrower deal and House Republicans demanding full funding.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that President Donald Trump is “encouraging” lawmakers to “come back to Washington to permanently fix this problem and to fund and reopen the Department of Homeland Security entirely.”
The House punted a two-month continuing resolution back to the Senate late Friday after rejecting the bipartisan deal Thune struck with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to fund everything at the DHS except ICE and Border Patrol. The deal passed at 2:30 a.m. Friday, just before senators left town for their break.
The late-night maneuver was meant to force the House to accept the deal. Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) rallied Republicans in opposition. The House rejected the deal and opted to pass legislation funding the entirety of the DHS for 60 days. In a blow to Thune, Trump lined up behind Johnson.
“This is exactly what voters hate about Washington,” GOP strategist Dennis Lennox told the Washington Examiner. “Democrats may have triggered the shutdown, but now both parties in Congress have left town while a core national security agency sits shuttered.”
“That’s not governing, it’s abdication,” Lennox continued. “Instead of doing their jobs, lawmakers are effectively forcing the president to improvise just to keep TSA officers paid and airports functioning.”
A Senate GOP aide told the Washington Examiner that Thune had informed the Senate Republican conference in a note over the weekend that he will not bring them back to Washington for a “show vote.” Thune will only call senators back if there is a deal that can get sufficient support among both Republicans and Democrats to overcome the chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
The GOP aide went on to say that the “quickest” way to reopen the agency would be for the House to pass the Senate’s DHS funding deal.
But some Republican lawmakers have been vocal in their discontent about the Senate going on recess, and are calling on Thune to bring back the upper chamber.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has also floated the idea of Trump using a presidential authority provided by the Constitution to order the Senate to convene due to “extraordinary occasions.”
“If a department with 260,000 employees (DHS) going unfunded isn’t an ‘extraordinary occasion’—especially while the Senate is out on a two-week recess during that shutdown with no plans to resolve the impasse beyond ‘we’ll deal with that in two weeks’—I don’t know what is,” Lee said Sunday night in a post on X.
In another post, he asserted that Republicans “waiting for a deal to materialize with Chuck Schumer applies no pressure on Senate Democrats to fund DHS. Interrupting their recess and forcing them to debate DHS funding on the Senate floor *would* apply pressure.”
Lee continued, “We can’t reward unprecedented obstruction with two-week recesses.”
And Lee is not the only lawmaker calling for their return.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said during a Monday appearance on Fox Business that the only way out of the “DHS funding mess” is for the Senate to come back to Washington and “ELIMINATE the filibuster NOW!”
Meanwhile, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) slammed Senate leadership during a Sunday appearance on Fox News, saying that ” the stereotype of Congress is, and it’s well deserved, is that we pass stuff in the dark of night because we don’t have any guts.”
He continued, “And that’s clearly what’s shown in the Senate leadership. I think they need to get some new leadership over there, in my opinion.”
The Senate deal was designed to overcome a monthlong impasse over Trump’s deportation policy, with Democrats demanding strict reforms and restrictions on ICE in exchange for funding. The Senate bill did not include ICE reforms, but House Democrats were prepared to vote for the deal, given that the funding to the immigration agencies would continue to be stalled.
The deal with Schumer only exacerbated conservative anger at Thune, who has come under fire for refusing to skirt the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act. Trump has said the legislation, which would require an ID to cast a ballot and proof of citizenship to vote, is his “No. 1 priority.” Abolishing the filibuster would allow Republicans to bypass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and pass legislation through a simple majority.
Thune has argued that there is not the support within the Senate GOP to either abolish the filibuster outright or weaken it to pass the SAVE America Act. The answer is not good enough for conservatives, however.
“The Senate is burning itself to the ground right now,” Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner. “They talk about ‘protecting the institution,’ while choosing to incinerate any remnant of institutional credibility the Senate has left. It’s an institution that believes itself to be far above any democratic accountability and one that puts its own self-interest above that of our country. So yes, they should come back immediately. … Anything else is contemptible, self-interested, and lazy.”
While Washington remains at a standstill, some lawmakers have drawn scrutiny for being spotted at vacation destinations across the country, from Disney World to Las Vegas.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) landed in hot water over the weekend after photos published by TMZ showed him at Disney World.
Graham said in a statement to the outlet that he was in South Florida to attend a meeting with U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff on Friday to “talk about the possibility of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”
“I went to Orlando to meet friends after,” Graham told the outlet. “I’m already back in South Carolina. I voted seven times to fully fund the government. Call a Democrat.”
House oversight committee ranking member Robert Garcia (D-CA) was spotted at a casino in Las Vegas, in a photo posted by TMZ, where he later responded, saying he was visiting his father.
“Actually, I don’t mind what TMZ is doing here,” Garcia wrote on X. “Like the story says my dad has lived in Vegas for 15 years and I had just finished lunch with him. I try to see him whenever I can. And like I said a few days ago, Speaker Mike Johnson should have never sent us all home.”
Since the shutdown started on Feb. 14, many employees who fall under the DHS have not been paid, leading hundreds to call out sick or quit. As a result, passengers at airports across the country have had to endure lengthy wait times at security checkpoints.
Transportation Security Administration employees had missed two pay periods before Trump signed an emergency order last week to pay the agents. Paychecks began going out on Monday, as many include money from the lapsed paychecks as well.
“To leave Washington while tens of thousands of workers are going without pay shows a clear lack of respect for the essential employees tasked with keeping our nation safe,” said Hydrick Thomas, American Federation of Government Employees TSA Council 100 president, in a statement.
HOUSE PASSES EIGHT-WEEK DHS DEAL TO PUNT SHUTDOWN BACK TO SENATE
Thomas’s union represents 45,000 TSA employees. He said that many of his “members have seen bills pile up, interest and late fees add up, cars repossessed, and families thrown into disarray because Congress has failed to do their jobs.”
With pressure mounting on Thune, and lawmakers scattered across the country, there is no clear path to reopening a core national security department.