We are once again in the longest partial government shutdown in history, with the Department of Homeland Security unfunded for 45 straight days, except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection that received additional funding in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and who are still being paid.
Unpaid are the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Secret Service, the Coast Guard and other agencies of DHS, which was originally established in 2002 after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to coordinate the government’s counterterrorism mission.
Those agencies’ unpaid, excepted employees who are still working even now — and the thousands of Americans stuck in long security lines at airport s— are the continued hostages in the current shutdown that began after Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed in Minnesota by the ICE and Border Patrol officers whom they were illegally obstructing.
Now, during the current shutdown, and after the war in Iran was renewed a month ago, there have already been four Islamist terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in Texas, New York, Virginia and Michigan. Also airport congestion, certainly not helped by the long lines at airports causing delays, has already had a deadly crash at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.
But that has not deterred Senate Democrats, who with a widening lead in the national generic Congressional ballot polls — now a comfortable 47.6 percent to 41.8 percent in the latest RealClearPolling.com average — have very little to lose by keeping the shutdown going, and so have blocked all attempts to fully fund the department.
Instead, Senate Democrats allowed a bill to pass that funds everything but ICE and Border Patrol, which, again, are already funded, with Senate Republicans offering a unanimous consent resolution that passed 100-0.
In turn, House Republicans then ping-ponged the measure back to the Senate, passing a 60-day continuing resolution for DHS, including funding for ICE and Border Patrol. It being a midterm election year that already favors Democrats, they might have very little to lose as well.
That is, it could just be that the outcome of the shutdown will have no bearing whatsoever either on polls or the outcome of the election in November, which as usual, will come down to turnout by the incumbent party — high turnout and it’s close, low turnout and it’s a wipeout.
Meaning, the House lacks the votes in the Senate to pass its measure, and the Senate lacks the votes in the House to pass its measure. This definitionally an impasse: Without 60 votes in the Senate, a measure cannot pass and become law, and without the House supporting a bill, it cannot become law, either.
If so, and neither side benefits or is harmed politically from the impasse, then the only thing being accomplished is hurting people.
In short, Democrats believe they can shut down everything for months on end — this is the second shutdown in less than year — and pay no political price. But their only true demand at the moment was don’t make them vote for ICE funding. Which, okay, fine, don’t vote for it; the Senate measure achieved that.
After all, Congressional Republicans could just do another budget reconciliation bill to get the rest of the funding and get out of this. If the Speaker has the votes for a two-month continuing resolution for DHS, then he likely has the votes for another reconciliation that just reups the funding for DHS. If so, it might be recommend at that point to just sticking Iran war funding in the reconciliation bill as well and anything else Democrats are likely to shut down the government over through 2028. Just fill everything up to the rim and prepare for the inevitable 2027 and 2028 government shutdowns.
But the House said no. So, airports might be expected to grind to a halt for another month while Democrats pay no political price whatsoever for the shutdown. If the entire government were shutdown there’d be a lot more leverage to just sit and wait. Instead, Congressional Republicans allowed DHS to get isolated and this is the inevitable result of that. Don’t do that again. Simple.
Having twelve separate appropriations bills sounds nice on paper, but it is not a constitutional requirement. In any event, Congressional Republicans did not pass twelve separate bills, they passed three minibuses, and now DHS funding is isolated. If the outcome is the President’s agenda items are stymied, then they might actually just be better off with an omnibus or a continuing resolution in the future.
The biggest consideration might just be what the American people want. Americans just want this to end as soon as possible. They don’t care in what order everything is funded, if the bills were separated or not, just that this end. DHS funding now plus reconciliation makes it end. But so too would just passing another continuing resolution until the end of the fiscal year.
One thing President Trump can do is to call the Senate back from its spring break — why are they taking a break when airports are ground to a halt? — under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution the President “may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them…”
So, reconvene the Senate, Mr. President. And when they get to airport security, make them wait extra long.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government.
