The Senate and the House of Representatives are still sparring over funding for a critical federal agency, even as air travel is crippled and the threat of terrorist acts looms large. In the earliest hours of Friday morning, while much of America still slept, Senate Republicans attempted to end the impasse they had reached against their Democratic counterparts and end the longest Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown in U.S. history.

The deal was met with outrage by House Republicans, however, as the bill provided funding for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Coast Guard, and other DHS components, but deliberately excluding funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the two DHS agencies responsible for immigration enforcement and border security, labeled problematic by Democrats.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) touted the bill’s passage as a win for Democrats, charging that Senate Republicans “caved to our demands to fund DHS without a blank check for ICE and CBP.” He added, “Democrats held firm in our opposition that [President] Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms, and we will continue to fight for those reforms.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lambasted the funding bill as a late-night “gambit” and a “joke,” suggesting that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other Senate Republicans likely hadn’t even read the text of the bill they approved. “I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill,” Johnson quipped. “It’s pretty alarming.” He cited a portion of the bill clarifying that there will be no funding provided to ICE and CBP, commenting, “We’re not doing that.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) spoke forcefully against Senate Republicans for passing the bill and then immediately leaving Washington, D.C. for the Easter recess period. “It is absolutely offensive to the people that we represent that the Senate would send over a bill that doesn’t fund Border Patrol and the core components of ICE,” he told reporters Friday. “It’s absurd. And the fact that they would expect us to take that up and pass it today, as they leave town — I mean, could the Senate be any more lazy than to send to us a bill that doesn’t do the job and then leave town? We’re going to stand up and say no to that. We’re going to send back a bill that’s responsible to the American people.”

Accordingly, House Republicans passed their own funding bill to ensure that the entirety of DHS receives federal funding, faulting Democrats for allowing the agency to be shut down for nearly 50 days now, even as war with Iran heightens national security concerns. “Is our border secure? Are our airports safe? Will hardworking personnel receive their paychecks? Can Secret Service plan for the security of upcoming national events? Do Americans have confidence that their government is doing its job to protect the country? This bill answers those questions with certainty,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) in a statement. “It ends the Democrat shutdown, restores full funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and ensures the men and women on the front lines of safeguarding our nation are paid, supported, and able to carry out their duties without continued disruption. It brings stability back to DHS now — and makes clear where the House stands: with our citizens.”

The House bill is a stopgap measure intended to fund DHS fully for a 60-day period while lawmakers continue battling over long-term funding. Congressional Democrats originally refused to fund DHS starting February 14, in an effort to halt ICE and CBP operations, maligning the immigration agencies as lawless and aggressive following controversial operations in Minnesota earlier. Since then, travelers have been waiting longer and longer periods of time in line at airports as unpaid TSA staff either quit or refuse to show up for work. Late Friday, 209 House Republicans were joined by three House Democrats and one Independent to pass the funding measure, while 203 Democrats voted against it. Eight Republicans and eight Democrats did not vote.

Schumer pledged that Senate Democrats would shut down the House bill, just as they have killed previous House efforts to fully fund DHS, describing the new bill as “dead on arrival.”

In a “Washington Watch” interview Friday night, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested that the House bill will likely fail in the Senate, instead recommending that DHS be funded through the budget reconciliation process, a theory floated previously by Thune. “The good news is ICE and CBP were funded by the One, Big, Beautiful Bill for a period of time. So we have a way to cure this. What we need to do is get this behind us, get on the same page,” he said. Through the reconciliation process, Johnson suggested, Republicans can pass “a very focused and very rapidly-passed reconciliation bill. My suggestion is let’s pass all of DHS for the Trump term and beyond.” He continued, “Again, it’s going to be a big price tag, but it’s going to be in lieu of appropriations, so Democrats can never use DHS and the men and women of DHS as pawns in their political games.”

Johnson shared that he was “disappointed” that the House rejected the Senate funding package, noting that friendly mainstream media coverage largely protects congressional Democrats from being held accountable by voters. “We can’t force Democrats to do certain things when you have no accountability, no pressure by the mainstream media. So that’s the pickle we’re in as Republicans. It’s not a fair fight. It’s not a level playing field,” he said. “I mean, if we could have passed something we would have done that. We would have done that days ago, weeks ago. But it’s not going to pass. So it’ll be right back in this House’s lap.”

Also on “Washington Watch” Friday, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) addressed many of the points raised by Johnson. Grothman said that Republican senators who backed the funding bill isolating ICE and CBP “would tell you … we have enough money available right now that we can do a reconciliation package and get the money to fund these two vital organizations before they run out of money.” He continued, “The problem is we have a very slim majority in the House of Representatives, and there is no guarantee that we can put together any package that will only cause us to lose two votes and could easily be one vote.” The congressman added, “Therefore we feel it would be reckless not to pass a bill that is fully funding both ICE and Border Patrol right now.”

In response to the funding crisis, the president issued an executive order demanding that DHS use funding already available to it in order to pay TSA agents. “As the Democrat-caused shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues well into its sixth week, America’s air travel system has reached its breaking point. This is an unprecedented emergency situation,” the president wrote. He added that the approximately 50,000 TSA agents who have gone unpaid for weeks have been denied funds by “Democrats’ reckless decision to prioritize criminal illegal aliens over American citizens and shut down DHS until their demand to prohibit enforcement of Federal immigration law is met.”

“If Democrats in the Congress will not act to honor the service of our TSA officers, who are now performing their critical public safety responsibilities without knowing whether they will be able to buy food for their families or pay their rent, then my Administration will take action,” the president announced. “As President of the United States, I have determined that these circumstances constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security.”

Grothman commented, “Donald Trump solved the biggest problem by … announc[ing] that he is going to fund the people at the airports. And I think that of all the things that Homeland Security does, that’s the one thing that has to get done and the people care about.” He suggested that without the public pressure resulting from the lapse in TSA funding, congressional Republicans may be more likely to fight Democrats to fund ICE and CBP. “So since he has just announced he is going to fund that, I think the other parts of the law, well, hopefully we’ll be able to come to a compromise on them.”

Some Senate Republicans have voiced that they would like to fight Democrats on the issue. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), for example, said in a Sunday night social media post, “Waiting for a deal to materialize with Chuck Schumer applies no pressure on Senate Democrats to fund DHS. Interrupting their recess and forcing them to debate DHS funding on the Senate floor *would* apply pressure. We can’t reward unprecedented obstruction with two-week recesses.” He further suggested that the president could exercise his constitutional authority to convene an “extraordinary” Senate meeting in order to force debate and a vote.