Breaking: House Republicans Reject Senate DHS Funding Bill, Johnson Calls It "A Joke"
Under the weight of its many failures the regime has begun to splinter and come apart......
Afternoon all. Big news. House Republicans have rejected the bi-partisan Senate bill to fund DHS minus ICE and CBP. Here’s a fresh account from The Hill:
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday rejected a Senate-passed bill to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but not immigration enforcement, instead proposing a stopgap to fund the entire department for eight weeks.
The move amounts to a stunning rebuke of the upper chamber by GOP leaders — and extends the length of what is already the longest partial government shutdown in history in its 42nd day.
“This gambit that was done last night is a joke. I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill,” Johnson said. “We’re not doing that.”
Johnson said he intended to hold a vote “as soon as possible.”
He also said he had spoken to President Trump moments earlier.
“He understands exactly what we’re doing,” Johnson said.
Conservatives in the House had fumed at the Senate deal, which caught House members by surprise and passed in the wee hours of Friday morning. The Senate bill funds much of the DHS, including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Those parts of the DHS are at the center of the shutdown fight. Democrats have demanded reforms after DHS personnel shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January in separate incidents.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus had put pressure on House GOP leaders to reject the deal earlier Friday.
House GOP leaders were also outraged at the Senate deal, expressing their displeasure to members on the call. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) warned the conference that the Senate bill would set a dangerous precedent to defund entire programs in appropriations bills, another source said.
There is little chance of an eight-week DHS stopgap, though, passing in the Senate, which would need Democratic support to clear the chamber’s 60-vote threshold. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) posted on social media that such a measure would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate.
The bill funding much of DHS also passed the Senate by unanimous consent, underlining its broad support, even as Johnson on Friday sought to put the blame on Senate Democrats.
Trump has not publicly weighed in on whether or not he supports the Senate deal.
Trump’s executive order to pay TSA agents despite the shutdown is also removing a key pressure point that otherwise might prompt lawmakers to come to a compromise.
Trump on Thursday, as the Senate was trying to negotiate a deal, announced he would fund TSA. It’s expected Trump would use money from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was approved last summer. It has repeatedly been used to pay ICE and CBP personnel during shutdowns.
This House bill cannot pass the Senate, as Democrats will not support ICE/CBP funding without reform; the Senate is out for two weeks so who knows what happens next; Trump is ordering DHS to pay TSA agents anyway; Johnson just torched his relationship with Thune; despite the begging and pleading from those running 2026 Republican campaigns Trump is keeping the despised ICE front and center in our discourse; and yes, what a start for Secretary Markwayne Mullin!
The chaos we are witnessing here comes in part from something I’ve been writing about all week - Trump is no longer capable of negotiating deals (here, here, here). As newly self-proclaimed God Emperor he can only dictate and command. It is our job, and the job of the Europeans, Iranians, Cubans, and Senate Leader Thune to YIELD, BEND THE KNEE, and not negotiate FFS!
This Trump thing is failing, and the regime has begun - under the extraordinary weight of his ongoing failures and Mad King lunacy - to splinter and fall apart. For as bad as things are for Republicans everything is about to get worse. The war is failing, inflation and gas prices are spiking, the economy slowing, the deficit soaring, consumer sentiment cratering, the markets tanking, we are soon going to start to really feel the effects of the GOP’s savage assault on our health care system, and today Trump’s governing coalition suffered a terrible and debilitating blow.
Trump just had the worst week of polling of his second term this week. We flipped two red seats in Florida, the MAGA heartland. As I wrote this morning, as bad as things are now for Republicans, the economy is going to get much, much worse in the coming months as will their electoral prospects. I think Senator Thune is aware of what a shitshow this has all become and just did the right thing last night and defied the addled old man down the street. But we are at that moment in the collapse of a failing regime that the Cowardly Speaker called something the Senate Republicans did “a joke” and he was backed up by Trump. Where we go from here God only knows but as I’ve writing these past few days I think we need to keep floating a national unity government of some kind, one that begins to take power away from Trump. Thune in essence tried that last night and it failed. I am willing to bet a lot of money it won’t be the last time he tries - for Trump has pushed the country into a deep crisis, and for the good of the nation we are going to have to find a way out, together.
Keep working hard all - Simon
GOP in disarray!!
And the Dem leadership has actually played a blinder here.
No one can try and argue that this shutdown is not 100% on Repubs now.
I'm not sure whether I should reach for the popcorn bowl to watch the current hot mess unfold or the kleenex box to wipe my eyes from our dysfunctional democracy. Are we at the "it's always darkest before the dawn" moment? It surely could get darker, but also this seems like one of those cracks Simon talks about. Many things are true at once right now. So maybe I both pop the popcorn and shed a tear.