Friday’s deadline to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) looms ever nearer, but “the two sides are pretty far apart,” acknowledged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). Unless a deal is reached, this will be the third time Senate Democrats have shut down at least part of the government since October. But, amid the scorched-earth political gambits, a whopping 260 members of Congress stood firm for pro-life, pro-family policies.

From January 31 to February 3, the government partially shut down after Senate Democrats reneged on a funding deal to pass the final six (out of 12) appropriations bills over the Trump administration’s enforcement of federal immigration law. Specifically, Democrats demanded operational changes to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before they would agree to fund DHS.

However, “ICE is already funded, which is what they’re fighting,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told The Washington Stand. “So they’re going to attack TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and several other agencies within DHS … which doesn’t make sense.” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) explained, “Part of our efforts in the Big Beautiful Bill was to get that funding in place so that we have flexibility to deal with Democrats, who clearly don’t want to enforce the law.”

On February 3, Congress agreed to a five-bill appropriations package, with a two-week continuing resolution on DHS to allow time for negotiations. That time window will expire on Friday, which means the government could see another partial shutdown over the same issue. While most of the government will remain open, the shutdowns will affect agencies like TSA and FEMA, which could lead to visible effects.

However, the earlier shutdown had far greater impacts. For six whole weeks, from October 1 to November 12, 2025, the entire government — besides those employees forced to keep working without pay — was shut down, making it the longest shutdown in American history. The reason why had nothing to do with the funding bills themselves. Instead, Senate Democrats tried to force Republicans to extend COVID-era Obamacare subsidies, without guardrails to prevent the money from funding abortions or gender transition procedures.

Bills such as this one “are emblematic of the attack from these leftists that want to basically recraft America to be a godless, valueless, leftist utopia,” argued Biggs. “We’ve got to stand up and fight against that.”

After inflicting weeks of unnecessary pain on federal workers (and air travelers), Senate Democrats caved and accepted the deal that Republicans had offered them weeks before: a vote on the subsidy bill of their choice, but no promise of passage.

Due to the abortion and sexuality concerns in the Obamacare subsidy bill, Family Research Council Action scored the procedural vote to advance the bill, which failed (51-48) to break the filibuster.

In total, FRC Action scored eight legislative votes in 2025, four in each chamber. Nearly half of Congress (260 members) scored 100% on the scorecard, with 211 representatives and 49 senators receiving a One Hundred Percent award for the year.

Other scored votes in the Senate included a bill to protect babies who survive a botched abortion, an IVF bill that opened the door to ethically concerning practices such as human cloning, human-animal chimeras, and embryo experimentation, and a bill to protect women’s sports. The votes scored in the House included the girls’ sports bill, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a version of the One Big Beautiful Bill which would have defunded Planned Parenthood for 10 years (instead of one), and the recissions package that cut funding from pro-abortion and pro-LGBT projects.

“Each of those issues goes to the heart of things that … the constituents sent me to Washington to stand up on,” Roy told TWS, “the important issues of life, and making sure that we’re recognizing the difference between men and women, making sure that we’re protecting mothers, protecting babies.”

A major development over the past decade is that basic pro-life protections such as the Hyde Amendment no longer enjoy bipartisan support, with Democrats now aggressively pushing for taxpayer funding for abortion.

But “The pro-life community is not going to approve federal funding of abortion,” insisted Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to TWS. “The pro-choice community, they’re like, ‘It’s no big deal.’ Wait, it’s ‘no big deal’ that there is a child within the womb that is aborted? It’s absurd! And so, it is a clear dividing line, and it’s something that we who believe in life will stand by.”

“Similarly, on … sex-change operations on minors, that should be stopped,” Cassidy added. “And the idea that there’s something moral about it shows a twisted sense of morality.”

Roy connected his support for pro-life, pro-family policies to his support for the enforcement of federal immigration laws. “The removal of people who are here illegally, regardless of the actions they’re taking when they’re here in terms of crime, is important because of what it does to our country and the rule of law,” he said. Additionally, “when people talk about importing labor, if you weren’t killing so many babies, you wouldn’t necessarily be trying to import labor. So, I think we ought to focus on our families and our communities here.”

The issues are also “interrelated” to Biggs. “So, you have brought in 20 million people, many [of whom] don’t have the respect for our culture and traditions. Many come from places that don’t have the same values or the rule of law respect that America traditionally has had.”

The same officials who oppose immigration enforcement also promote taxpayer funding of abortion and gender transition procedures for minors, and their numbers are strong enough in Congress to derail funding for entire governmental departments, like FEMA, unless their demands are met.

As a result, Biggs predicted that a partial government shutdown of all DHS programs except for ICE seems inevitable “unless some sanity starts rearing its head on the Democrat side.”

Cassidy also predicted this outcome, lamenting that it would be “too bad in my state. Winter storm Fern has killed nine people across the northern part of my state, and they are still recovering. And they want to know that FEMA is there to support them. And the fact that there might be a shutdown of DHS, which controls FEMA — it just adds more uncertainty to people’s life right now.”

Meanwhile, the pro-life, pro-family majority in Congress has “got to keep marching forward,” Roy urged. “We celebrate things like defunding Planned Parenthood, which I fought to do and celebrate, and it’s great. … But mifepristone is still killing babies. So we’ve got a lot of work to do, and we’ve got to keep moving forward.”

“Every time,” Roy reiterated, “we take three yards and a cloud of dust. And we stand up for the sanctity of life, we stand up for the recognition of the differences between men and women, and just keep moving forward.”