The House and Senate are both out for the next two weeks. Their absence is pretty remarkable given the Department of Homeland Security is still shut down. We’re publishing AM editions only this week. But we’ll have alerts for premium subscribers if there’s any news.
Let’s be abundantly clear — this record-breaking, 44-day DHS funding impasse has turned into a political disaster for Republicans.
At one point, Republicans seemed to be breaking through with their message that Democrats instigated the DHS fight over undocumented immigrants. But now, House and Senate Republicans are publicly warring with each other over who’s at fault for last week’s debacle. The GOP-run Congress has left town until mid-April, while President Donald Trump was forced to issue an executive order to pay TSA employees.
Trump’s poll numbers have taken another hit thanks to the Iran war (although he now has an even freer hand with Congress gone). The president is considering using thousands of U.S marines and ground troops to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, potentially drawing out the conflict for weeks or months.
Back home, gas prices are still soaring. Inflation remains a problem, and interest rates look like they may be heading upward, too. Wall Street is in correction territory. The S&P 500 is down 7% this year, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is off more than 6%.
Capitol latest. Congress doesn’t return until April 13, when the DHS shutdown will be nearly two months old.
On Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans voted 213-203 to fund DHS for two months. It came hours after the Senate unanimously passed its own bill funding DHS minus ICE and CBP.
On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told GOP senators that he was working with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to see if there’s something Democrats would agree to. But Thune also noted that Senate Democrats have already rejected CRs for DHS, including the one the House passed.
A Schumer spokesperson reiterated on Sunday that Democrats “would not accept anything less than what was passed unanimously by the Senate,” adding: “Republicans shouldn’t look to Senate Democrats to fix their own internal caucus problems.”
Happening soon. The Senate will hold a pro forma session this morning, the first of four over the recess. Thune locked in this schedule by unanimous consent shortly after the Senate passed its DHS bill early Friday morning, so it can’t be changed easily.
It’s possible that a Republican senator could seek to pass the House bill during the 10:30 a.m. pro forma. There will likely be a Democratic senator on hand to object.
Senate Republican leaders are continuing to defend their approach despite the House vote. They note that the Trump administration has confirmed that their bill provides sufficient resources and flexibility to fund ICE and CBP salaries and operations.
Some conservatives want Trump to use his constitutional power to force lawmakers to return to Washington. Trump has leaned into an anti-Congress sentiment of late, calling on Thune to work to get the votes to axe the filibuster and saying the Senate bill wasn’t acceptable.
The internal politics. The dueling bills Friday were among the most remarkable splits among Republicans during the 119th Congress.
The conventional view is that Johnson made a big mistake by not clearing the Senate bill on what would’ve been a large bipartisan vote. House GOP leadership aides estimate that the Senate bill would have passed with every Democrat and more than half of Republicans. GOP leaders could then shift their focus to reconciliation and renewing FISA.
Another view: Johnson had no choice thanks to his own internal politics. The speaker has said for months that DHS must be fully funded. And the House Republican Conference is and has been driven by the hardline conservatives. When the middle of the conference — the vulnerable Republicans from swing districts — don’t push back, the GOP leadership tends to listen to the Freedom Caucus and its allies.
Johnson wants to remain a viable speaker for the next seven months, so he had no choice but to listen to the HFC — even if that meant publicly stiff-arming Thune.
This episode illustrates how adrift the GOP-run Congress is when Trump remains on the sidelines. Trump was completely silent about the Senate’s proposal, although his staff was telling lawmakers he approved. When it became clear that the House would reject it, Trump sided with them.
Let’s be clear: Democrats instigated this shutdown because of their frustration with ICE and CBP’s headline tactics during immigration enforcement raids in Minnesota. Those raids resulted in the deaths of two Americans at the hands of federal agents.
But now the House Republican Conference has ownership of the impasse. Johnson’s rejection of Thune’s approach ensures that the next two weeks will be all about how GOP infighting is prolonging the shutdown.
