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Senate Majority Leader John Thune negotiated for weeks with Democratic senators. In the predawn hours of Friday, after trading offers several times, Thune and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer settled on a deal to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security through September 30.
The package would not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. It would have reopened airports, paid 50,000 unpaid federal workers and ended a lengthy government shutdown.
By noon, it collapsed.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson marched out of his office and called the measure "a joke." "I have to protect the House, and I have to protect the American people," Johnson told reporters. More than 480 TSA officers had quit since February. At some airports, 40 to 50 percent of the workforce called out on certain days. Yet Johnson walked away.
The Split Emerges
The rejection exposed a rupture between the two Republican leaders in Congress. On a GOP conference call that morning, several dozen members ranging from moderates to hard-line conservatives spoke against the Senate deal. Representative Nick LaLota of New York said the Senate had "chickened out."
"The cowards there, only a few of them in the middle of the night with I think only three to five senators present on the floor, chickened out because they wanted to go home for two weeks," LaLota said.
House GOP Conference chair Lisa McClain woke at 5:30 a.m. Friday, to learn that the Senate had already voted. She told reporters she was shocked. On a private conference call that afternoon, Johnson claimed Thune had "cut off communications," though sources familiar with their conversations disputed this, noting Thune had been texting with Johnson overnight.
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Asked if he had cleared the compromise with Johnson, Thune said the two had texted. "I don't know what the House will do," Thune said early Friday as the deal came together.
But Johnson blamed Democrats, not Thune. "I wouldn't call John Thune the engineer of this," he said. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer had forced it on the chamber, Johnson argued, though Thune had spent weeks drafting the text of the bill.
Thune saw it differently. "I felt like from the beginning, they just didn't want to get to 'yes,'" Thune said after the vote, referring to Democrats. He pointed out that Congress had allotted money for immigration enforcement in the tax bill. "We can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we'll go from there," he told reporters.
Trump's Move Changes the Calculus
TSA workers had gone without pay since mid-February. Nearly 500 of the agency's nearly 50,000 officers quit during the shutdown. Nationwide on Thursday, more than 11.8 percent of scheduled TSA employees missed work—more than 3,450 callouts. At some airports, call-out rates hit 40 percent or higher.
Trump signed an executive order on Friday directing his administration to pay TSA screeners immediately, using funds from the 2025 tax bill. With that pressure valve opened and paychecks flowing by Monday, Johnson felt emboldened to reject the deal. The 42-day impasse suddenly had no obvious political cost.
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Trump's position had been unclear. His staff signaled approval of Thune's approach to lawmakers. Then, once it became clear the House would reject the deal, Trump sided with Johnson. "I spoke to the president a few moments ago; he understands exactly what we're doing and why, and he supports it," Johnson said Friday afternoon.
Thune's calculation had made sense when he negotiated. Republicans lacked the votes to break a Democratic filibuster. The Senate needed Democratic support. That meant compromise. His deal would have funded TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard immediately, while deferring the fight over ICE to a later vote.
Johnson disagreed on strategy. "We're not going to risk not funding the agencies that keep the American people safe," he told reporters Friday.
The Standoff Hardens
Congress adjourned for two weeks with neither chamber willing to move. The Senate passed its compromise by voice vote early Friday. The House passed its own bill 213-203 Friday night, fully funding all DHS agencies through May 22. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the House GOP plan would be "dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it."
Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican, summed up the impasse. "This takes two chambers to get the job done," he said. "Apparently, there's not enough communication between those chambers."
The shutdown reached 44 days on Sunday, eclipsing the record 43-day shutdown last fall that affected all of the federal government. With lawmakers scattered and neither side moving, the stalemate entered another week with no clear end in sight.
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