With Department of Homeland Security funding about to lapse, Congress left Capitol Hill on Thursday a day ahead of the deadline with no plans to return for over a week. Lawmakers are professing outrage about what will likely be an extended agency shutdown and are eagerly pointing fingers about who is to blame.
“It’s just mind-boggling to me,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican, told NOTUS. “But we’ll go home knowing that TSA and FEMA is not funded.”
With Congress at a stalemate, funding for the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard — which are housed under DHS — is also hamstrung.
The standoff sets a potentially weeks-long shutdown of the entire $100 billion agency as lawmakers chip away at negotiations focused on reining in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The stalemate comes after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. Democrats are insisting on major reforms to ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Republicans, who successfully campaigned on an immigration crackdown in 2024, are pursuing a significantly more narrow package.
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A vote Thursday afternoon to advance a funding package for DHS fell short of the 60-votes threshold. And an effort to pass a two-week funding bill was rejected.
With a solution elusive, long-simmering frustrations regarding the apparent third government shutdown of this congressional term boiled over Thursday as lawmakers departed Capitol Hill. Some were openly fuming that members plan to attend the Munich Security Conference in Germany in lieu of brokering a deal in Washington. Neither chamber is scheduled to return to Congress until Feb. 23, although Speaker Mike Johnson has advised the House to remain flexible to return sooner.
“You know what would make people’s blood boil? If they know what was actually going on here,” Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt said in a social media post. “The Democrats are about to shut down the Department of Homeland Security budget bill.”
“Democrats are going to shut that down, and then get to fly to Munich?” Schmitt said. (Some Republicans are also planning to attend the security conference.)
At least one lawmaker said he was glad there will be a break — but only because he hopes Republicans interfacing with constituents will grease DHS talks.
Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said he hopes the break will allow Republicans “to go home and get yelled at.”
“Not just by people who are progressive, but everybody thinks that this agency is out of control and needs to be reinvented,” he said. “This is no longer a partisan issue. This is a question of American values. And I think it’s going to take them maybe another week to figure out how pissed off their own voters are about the idea of a masked police force terrorizing communities.”
Much of the week was a showdown between Republicans and Democrats, but it was also equally a brawl between the legislative and executive branches — adding to the dour mood of the Capitol Building.
If DHS wasn’t generating enough angst on Capitol Hill this week, lawmakers pointed to plenty of other reasons for partisan animosity. Attorney General Pam Bondi testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the Trump administration’s ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking network. Democrats are unhappy about the Justice Department’s compliance with a law Congress passed to release the unclassified files related to Epstein. Photos of a binder Bondi used during the testimony revealed her department surveilled lawmakers’ as they reviewed unredacted documents this week, igniting fresh outrage about DOJ practices.
“The relationship between the executive and legislative branches is very tense at this point,” the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin, told reporters.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis directed his frustration toward another drama of the week: the legal battle between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. A federal judge blocked Hegseth’s efforts to punish Kelly for a video in which the senator said military members can defy unlawful orders, but that didn’t stop Tillis from unloading on the Trump administration.
“Be ready for Pete Hegseth to experience the same thing in two, four or six years,” an angry Tillis told reporters.
The House on Wednesday also defied President Donald Trump by rolling back his tariff authority, despite Republican leadership’s attempt to browbeat moderates into submission. But much of lawmakers’ attention on Thursday centered on the funding saga, and Republicans put the blame for the upcoming funding lapse squarely on the other party.
One retiring Republican senator blamed Democrats for their inability to avoid a shutdown. “Hugely disappointed in the other party,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis said of her feelings about the Senate’s progress. “I think they’re disingenuous about this.”
“This is about politics, not policy,” she added, “and I’m disappointed that they’re behaving this way.”
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