Democrats said Monday they have no plans to end their blockade of Department of Homeland Security funding in the face of GOP pressure to capitulate after President Donald Trump’s sweeping strikes on Iran.

Congressional Republicans insist the military conflict makes ending the 17-day DHS shutdown even more urgent, given the agency’s role in counterterrorism and domestic security.

But Democrats say they’ve been clear from the beginning that if Republicans want their votes, they must agree to changes to how the Trump administration carries out its immigration enforcement agenda.

Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, flatly rejected the suggestion that war with Iran should change his party’s shutdown posture.

“No,” he said in an interview. “We gave fair warning to the Republicans that we were serious about reining in what the ICE forces are doing. What we’re talking about is responsible.”

As an alternative, many Democrats are willing to fund DHS agencies that don’t deal with immigration enforcement. Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, introduced a bill almost three weeks ago that would fund parts of DHS including the Coast Guard, TSA, Secret Service, FEMA and the nation’s cybersecurity agency through Sept. 30.

“There’s no disagreement on any of that. We could move forward and fund those for the rest of the year, and then have the negotiation” on ICE and Customs and Border Protection, DeLauro said in an interview Monday night. “But this is about their politics.”

Splitting up the DHS bill is something Republicans have opposed since the funding lapse started. According to three people granted anonymity to disclose private strategy, House and Senate GOP leaders see no reason to change their views now.

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) said in an interview Monday that Democrats are “putting the country at risk” by not funding DHS and that they “should work with the administration to come up with something they can vote for.”

A group of Republicans in the Texas legislature cited a deadly Sunday morning shooting in Austin in urging congressional leaders to “pass full, unencumbered funding for DHS without delay.” Authorities are investigating whether the Iran attack motivated the gunman, who was killed by law enforcement.

Because a huge proportion of DHS employees work on “essential” national security related tasks, agency furloughs have been limited, though administrative and planning work is largely on pause. That means most TSA screeners, FEMA workers and Coast Guard members are at work but not being paid as the shutdown stretches past two weeks.

Immigration enforcement agencies are still active during the DHS shutdown, and they have billions of dollars already in their coffers from the GOP megabill Republicans passed last summer.

The standoff leaves the two sides largely stuck at loggerheads with no clear path to ending the partial government shutdown anytime soon.

House GOP leaders are planning a second vote on DHS funding Thursday — on a bill that has only minor changes from the measure the House passed on Jan. 22. That was just days before the killing of a 37-year-old man in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents prompted Senate Democrats to demand major policy changes in return for their votes.

At least seven Democrats would need to support a DHS funding bill to end debate under Senate filibuster rules.

Speaker Mike Johnson told House Republicans in a private call Sunday night that funding DHS operations will be a priority for the House GOP amid the Iran war fallout, given the heightened security risk. Privately, GOP leaders are hoping to exacerbate a Democratic split on the vote and keep the focus away from their own internal divides over the war.

Democratic leaders in the House are whipping against the funding bill ahead of the Thursday vote, saying in a caucus memo it has “no new language to end the chaos caused by ICE in communities across the country.”

Seven House Democrats voted “yes” in January, but that was before federal agents shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis — and even then, the funding fight sparked days of public sparring within the caucus.

And while Johnson could pick up at least a few Democratic votes, the modified bill is dead on arrival in the Senate. Only Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has voted to advance the DHS bill, and there is no sign more of his Democratic colleagues are prepared to join him.

“I’ve heard Republicans suggest that we should fund ICE because they started an illegal war with Iran — that’s ridiculous,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), ranking member of the DHS Appropriations subcommittee. “The American public wants ICE to stop murdering people, and they also don’t want us at war with Iran.”

Democrats and the White House have been trading counteroffers for weeks without making much progress. Trump hasn’t sat down yet with congressional leaders, and each side is dismissing the other as making unworkable demands.

“They have not given us a serious offer, and they need to understand we’re taking this seriously,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, said in an interview Monday. “We want accountability and reforms to ICE in order to fund them.”

Mia McCarthy, Jennifer Scholtes, Meredith Lee Hill and Calen Razor contributed to this report. 

Sen. Josh Hawley said he would oppose a bipartisan resolution to require President Donald Trump to get Congress’ sign-off before taking additional military action against Iran.

The Missouri Republican, who drew Trump’s wrath earlier this year when he initially supported a similar resolution for Venezuela, said he was satisfied with the official notification the administration sent Monday to Capitol Hill, which asserted no ground troops are involved in the Iran operation.

“I’ve always said that committed ground troops would be something I think that would require immediately a congressional authorization, but that doesn’t seem to be in the immediate horizon,” Hawley said.

Asked about Trump not ruling out the possibility of ground operations in his public statements, Hawley said he “can understand why he wouldn’t want to rule anything in or out.”

He added it would be a “different scenario” if ground troops are deployed at a later date.

Hawley has advocated in the past for a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. He voted to advance a resolution that would put limits on Trump’s ability to take further action against Venezuela following the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.

Trump lashed out at Hawley and the other four Republicans who voted to advance the measure, which ultimately failed after Hawley and Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) switched their votes after Rubio offered reassurances about group troops not being deployed in Venezuela.

The Senate will likely vote Wednesday on a bipartisan resolution to require congressional signoff for additional military action against Iran. With Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) expected to oppose the resolution, Democrats will need to pick up at least five Republicans to pass the resolution.

Several GOP senators who have flirted with checking Trump’s war powers, including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Young, either declined to comment Monday about how they would vote on the resolution or said they were undecided.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who voted against the Venezuela resolution, also said that he is undecided on the Iran war powers resolution.

“Obviously if we’re going to be there over time in a sustained effort, then we’ve got to have a consultation with Congress,” Tillis said. “If it’s a Venezuela — done and out by the end of the week — that’d be one thing because you’d be passing a war powers resolution after the conflict is over.”

Calen Razor contributed to this report.

The White House told Republican lawmakers Monday that “America will win” and “the terrorist Iranian regime will be defeated” as it seeks to address criticism of the shifting war aims being put forward by President Donald Trump and his deputies following Saturday’s initial strikes.

A memo from the administration’s legislative affairs office sent to Hill Republicans on Monday afternoon laid out four military objectives, including “annihilating” Iran’s navy and assuring it can never produce a nuclear weapon. The elimination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the memo said, was a “byproduct” of those aims.

But while a set of talking points shied away from saying the operation is aimed at regime change, it predicted nonetheless that would be the outcome of the operation, which it did not describe — as Trump has — as a “war.”

“President Trump should be commended for killing terrorists and finally having the courage to do what American presidents for nearly 50 years have all contemplated but failed to execute,” the document said. “The rogue Iranian Regime, under the evil hand of the Ayatollah, has killed and maimed thousands of U.S. soldiers over the years. Their brutal attacks and threats will end under President Donald J. Trump. America will win – the terrorist Iranian regime will be defeated.”

Elsewhere it reads, “Though the regime has changed, this operation is about ending the threat posed to the United States by the Iranian Regime.”

The White House messaging guidance comes as Trump supporters outside of government have started to voice misgivings about the president’s decision to strike Iran. House Republicans have been quieter so far, but some are wary of a prolonged war — especially ahead of the November midterm elections.

Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) posted on X after the strikes that “America First is supposed to be a policy mindset, not another empty slogan with hollow promises” and that Congress needed to have a role in authorizing the conflict.

The memo seeks to play down any concerns about an open-ended commitment to the Iran operation without specifying exactly how long it might last.

“A long and drawn-out war is not the President’s intention,” the White House memo says. “The President has estimated this operation will last approximately 4-5 weeks.”