There’s been a lot of colorful language flying around about the mess Democrats have made of Homeland Security funding. But after last week’s eleventh-hour Senate deal went up in flames in the House, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) might have been the most descriptive of the upper chamber’s proposal. It’s a “turd sandwich,” he said bluntly. Of course, it wasn’t exactly love at first sight with the House’s eight-week continuing resolution, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) team waved off as absurd. Meanwhile, both sides are desperately trying to hang this chaos around the other party’s neck. Good luck with that. Most Americans feel like Florida’s David Simmons, who sat at Reagan National Airport and complained to reporters, “I blame them all.”

That sentiment seems to be the prevailing one, as travelers spend entire days at the airport just to make it through security lines in time — or, if they can afford it, pay someone else to wait. Hired line-sitters are the latest solution for a situation so out of control that places like BWI were so crowded that people were cued up outside and around the building. Most Americans seem sympathetic to TSA workers, who they believe “are suffering enough.” “We don’t want another 9/11,” Lizabeth Garza-García told NBC News. “I’d like these people to get funded.”

While the liberal media has desperately tried to point the finger at Republicans for failing to strike a deal, the reality is that Democrats launched the country into this DHS doomsday when they pulled the plug on government funding almost 50 days ago to make a political point. Even their own caucus recognizes how risky that strategy is. “We’ve gotten too used to using shutdowns as a mechanism of getting what we want legislatively,” Rep. Jim Hines (D-Conn.) argued Sunday on CBS. “And what that implies is that people like TSA agents or folks that work in the federal government … don’t get paid when one party throws a tantrum, right?”

His colleague, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), one of a handful of Democrats to vote for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s eight-week DHS continuing resolution, pushed back on her party’s hardliners, posting on X, “I believe that it’s wrong not to pay people for their work. The president has agreed to several reforms to ICE,” she continued, “including mandatory body cameras, ID numbers, ending enforcement at hospitals and schools, and other reforms. ... Walking away from DHS funding will not fix anything about ICE and it screws a lot of hard-working people,” Perez insisted. “Ideological purity that empowers a broken system and hurts working people is not what I was sent to Congress to be part of.”

And while Democrats have managed to largely stick together, the tension between House and Senate Republicans is palpable. Most of Johnson’s caucus felt like they were “being jammed” with a last-minute bill by the Senate, prompting “a lot of frustrations,” Donalds agreed.

What’s more, House conservatives point out, the compromise they were sent still leaves major gaps at DHS where FEMA, the Coast Guard, and cybersecurity are concerned. “One of the things that we had real concerns with,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) underscored on ABC, “is it actually defunds over 25% of the baseline operations of the Department of Homeland Security. Twenty-five percent,” he repeated. “At a time when we’re at a heightened threat level.” That might be why some senators are having second thoughts about what the chamber agreed to. “We actually read their bill,” Scalise said pointedly, “and frankly, a number of senators have expressed buyer’s remorse with what they did at three in the morning.”

That doesn’t mean the House solution is perfect. “We sent a bill that was short-term,” the majority leader acknowledged. “It’s not exactly what we want. But at least it allows everybody to get paid.”

Fortunately, on Monday, thanks to President Trump’s executive action, TSA agents were starting to get their first checks since Valentine’s Day. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Border Czar Tom Homan stressed. “We’re in an increased threat posture because of what’s going on around the world. We’ve got to keep this country safe.” That means, he emphasized, “we just need to get the department funded. [Democrats] want to talk about immigration policies. We can talk about that, but why do you [have] to hold the rest of DHS hostage to be able to do that? Let’s sit down and talk.”

The earliest the Senate could sit down and talk is Thursday, since that’s how long the chamber is technically gaveled out. But with Good Friday the following day, there’s almost zero hope Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) would try to call members back to town.

As for the tension between the two GOP leaders, Johnson has said he understands that his counterpart was up against the clock, Easter recess, and a stubborn minority party. “I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” Johnson told reporters before adding, “The Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate.” The South Dakota leader also had a heads-up that the House couldn’t accept the compromise. “I told him. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that we would not be able to do that,” Johnson explained afterward. The two men had a “good talk,” and “we both lamented the situation.”

The president, who’s been consumed by the Iran conflict and stayed largely on the sidelines of the fight, seemed to be reluctantly on board with the Senate’s proposal early on but later agreed with Johnson that DHS can’t have such gaping funding holes. Even so, he carefully indicated his support for both leaders. “The Democrats want to let illegals come into the country,” Trump said to the press pool. “I understand John Thune. And I understand Mike Johnson. They want to be sure that people aren’t coming into our country like they have for the last four years.”

Where the debate heads from here, no one knows. Making matters more complicated, Congress doesn’t just have to navigate the two parties’ non-negotiables but the two chambers’ red lines as well — making the likelihood of a quick deal highly improbable. But don’t write off Johnson, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) smiled in a segment on “This Week on Capitol Hill” with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

Obviously, he continued, “we have an obligation [and] responsibility to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The House has done that in a bipartisan way on three separate occasions. [We] did it again [Thursday] in a bipartisan way.” But Schumer isn’t interested in guaranteeing the country’s safety, LaHood warned. He wants to “continue to play political games with the American people. … So, I think there’s still a long way to go on getting this done in the House.” But, he emphasized, “… Speaker Johnson has done a remarkable job on being able to pass much of President Trump’s agenda. I give him a lot of credit. … But it’s the reality that we’ve got to have everybody on board.”

As daunting as that sounds, it’s less so with the current leader of the House. “I joke that I call him Magic Johnson,” LaHood grinned, “because he’s been able to pull a few rabbits out of his hat.” Maybe Easter will make those rabbits easier to come by. Americans everywhere certainly hope so.