(The Center Square) – On its 44th day, the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is officially the longest government shutdown in American history.
Lawmakers in both chambers of Congress, however, are pointing fingers rather than canceling their scheduled two-week recess, and President Donald Trump is unhappy.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Trump is “encouraging Congress to come back to Washington to permanently fix this problem and to fund and reopen the Department of Homeland Security entirely.”
Some members of Congress also support canceling the recess. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, pointed out that under Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, Trump could force the Senate to convene.
“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 stated on X.
The shutdown could have ended Friday if the House had accepted the last-minute deal Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., brokered with Democrats.
Using a voice vote, the Senate passed a Homeland Security appropriations bill to fund DHS agencies like TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard, but not the agencies handling immigration enforcement and border security.
Thune’s idea was for the House to approve the Senate’s funding deal, and then use another party-line budget reconciliation bill to give ICE and Border Patrol their fiscal year 2026 money – minus the plethora of immigration enforcement reforms Democrats had demanded in the original bill.
Senate Democrats triggered the shutdown on Feb. 13 by tanking the fiscal year 2026 Homeland Security bill, refusing to let it pass unless Republicans implemented a laundry list of new immigration enforcement restrictions and reforms.
Thune’s compromise sidestepped their demands without impacting the operations of ICE and CBP. While other DHS agencies have struggled, ICE and CBP have continued operations by dipping into their respective $70 billion funding boost allocated by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed last year.
But House Republicans revolted.
“Why didn’t the House vote on the Senate DHS bill? Because we read it. It defunds over 25% of DHS and undermines efforts to combat child exploitation and drug trafficking,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., explained Monday on X. “Congress must FULLY FUND DHS to keep our borders secure and our homeland safe.”
Rather than voting on the Senate-passed deal, Republicans instead passed a Continuing Resolution Friday night that would have funded all DHS agencies for the next 60 days.
By that time, the Senate had already left town, and the CR would have certainly failed in the Senate regardless.
“Republicans officially own the longest government shutdown in U.S. history,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif, said Monday on social media. “They rejected a bipartisan bill to reopen the Department of Homeland Security that would pay TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard. Republicans would rather play politics than pay our federal workers.”
Not only are Democrats and Republicans blaming each other, but House and Senate Republicans are at war with each other as well.
Reps. Greg Steube, R-Fla., and Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., both categorized the Senate leaving D.C. without taking up the CR “a disgrace” and blamed “weak leadership.”
“No urgency, no accountability. Just walked away while our national security hangs in the balance,” Mills fumed Monday on X. “Cancel the recess. Get back to Washington. Do your job and pass the bill.”