It took a monthlong feud with the Senate for Speaker Mike Johnson to end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, but on Thursday, he finally accepted a deal he once called a “crap sandwich,” ending a 76-day funding standoff that grew out of the Trump administration’s harsh immigration enforcement tactics.
Officially, the funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security will go down as the longest government shutdown in history, eclipsing a record lawmakers set in the fall. But it turns out, this lapse stretched on long past when it needed to.
House Republicans quietly passed a bill Thursday to reopen DHS, which has been at least partially shut down since Feb. 14. After a four-week standoff between House and Senate leaders, Johnson’s chamber unceremoniously and suddenly passed the Senate-backed measure by voice vote, declining to take a recorded vote on a bill that has not changed since the Senate advanced it.
The bill, which funds all of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk. And while Republicans plan to pass $70 billion in funding for those two agencies in a future reconciliation bill, they currently have billions available from last year’s Republican tax and spending law.
It took 29 days after Johnson initially said the House would pass the Senate-brokered bill. In the meantime, House Republicans threw a fit over the lack of ICE funds, holding out until members were confident they could pass a follow-up bill for the embattled agency.
“We threw a fit, and we had to,” Johnson told reporters Thursday. “We held the Homeland bill, the underlying funding bill, because we had to ensure that they could not isolate and eliminate those two critical agencies. We are getting those done now.”
On Monday, Johnson told reporters the Senate-passed bill had “some problematic language,” adding that it was “haphazardly drafted.”
But that “haphazardly drafted” version passed on Thursday anyway.
“Democrats got absolutely nothing for their political charade and shenanigans,” Johnson said after Thursday’s vote.
But Johnson and House Republicans did not really get anything for refusing to pass the Senate bill either. Senators in both parties were exasperated but relieved that the saga had ended Thursday.
“About time,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told reporters.
“Took too long,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said. “I’m just glad it’s done.”
Democrats were grateful House Republicans gave in, but they said the back and forth offered a warning about dysfunction among GOP leaders.
“I don’t know what happened — they just had an attack of sensibility over on the other side and actually got it passed,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told reporters. “I’m glad they did, but wow, really?”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., blamed the House’s unofficial “Hastert rule,” a principle named for former Speaker Dennis Hastert that requires House leaders to garner support from a majority of their party’s members to bring a bill up for a vote, in addition to the necessary majority of members in the chamber overall.
“They could’ve solved this a month ago,” Coons told MS NOW. “It passed here unanimously. It is a striking reminder that the wings of the Republican majority in the House have almost irreconcilable differences, and it’s a real challenge for us in terms of governing.”
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The Senate passed the bill through unanimous consent late last month, the same day Trump signed a memo directing DHS to pay TSA workers. Earlier this month, he signed another memo to pay other DHS workers.
In the meantime, the immigration enforcement landscape changed dramatically. Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and replaced her with Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin. And ICE and CBP largely stood down from their aggressive tactics of grabbing people off the street as the administration turned to other methods aimed at mass deportation, such as revoking the status of people with long-standing legal residency.
Last week, after Congress gaveled back into session, Mullin warned that DHS was running out of emergency funds to pay workers.
Pressure over the dwindling emergency funds played a role in ending the standoff, as did Republican claims that it was affecting national security in the wake of the shooting of a Secret Service agent Saturday when an intruder tried to get into the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
House Republicans had to overcome — or ignore — multiple challenges to accept the Senate’s plan. First, conservatives insisted they should hold out for a separate, partisan reconciliation bill funding ICE and CBP. That was a partial victory for the party’s right flank, as members waited until they approved a budget resolution providing an outline for the upcoming bill.
Aside from the conservative push for a reconciliation bill, Republicans said as recently as Wednesday that they did not want to pass the bill because it specified in writing that it provided $0 for ICE and CBP, rather than simply leaving those agencies unmentioned.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., told reporters Wednesday that lawmakers should change the bill — requiring another vote in both the House and Senate — to leave out references to ICE and CBP and their corresponding zeros.
As of Wednesday, when House Republicans were pushing for changes to the Senate’s bill, it was a matter of pride.
“I didn’t come here to vote the way the Senate wants to vote on everything,” Cole said. “Neither did any other member. We’re supposed to be able to work it out.”
A day later, Cole backed the decision to accept the Senate’s bill, saying it ended a shutdown the Democrats started.
“I’d rather carry the weight of an imperfect move forward than ask them to carry the real-life burden of Democrat failure,” Cole said in a statement Thursday.
Jack Fitzpatrick covers Congress for MS NOW. He previously reported for Bloomberg Government, Morning Consult and National Journal. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from Arizona State University.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
Syedah Asghar
Syedah Asghar covers Congress for MS NOW.