Lawmakers are heading for the exits following a failed Senate vote Thursday, all but guaranteeing the Department of Homeland Security shuts down early Saturday morning.

The funding lapse, which will hit parts of DHS harder than others, comes as the White House and congressional Democrats have failed to move closer to a deal after trading proposals to rein in immigration enforcement practices in the wake of two high-profile shootings in Minneapolis.

Democrats called the latest offer from the White House insufficient Thursday and are expected to send a counteroffer.

“Democrats have been very clear: We will not support an extension of the status quo,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote.

Democrats went on to block progress on a DHS funding bill the House passed last month, which would have been the vehicle for a short-term funding punt or a larger immigration agreement. The procedural vote was 52-47, well short of the needed 60 votes.

Prior to the vote, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, announced that ICE would be ending its enhanced immigration enforcement, a step that Democrats have called for. But Schumer said Thursday that “ICE’s abuses cannot be solved merely through executive fiat alone — we first and foremost need legislation.”

Republicans are expected to try to pass at least one weeks-long stopgap for DHS Thursday afternoon. But because every senator would need to agree to quick passage, it is expected to be blocked on the Senate floor.

While the negotiations have centered on ICE and Customs and Border Protection, a shutdown will affect a wider variety of agencies including TSA, FEMA and the Coast Guard.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that he thought the White House offer went “a long ways” toward an agreement, adding, “There are a couple of issues obviously that they’re going to have to work through and work out [with Democrats], and lines that neither side is probably going to be able to cross.”

Thune added that Democrats are “posturing right now” but that “progress has been real.”

With no deal close at hand, the Senate is on track to adjourn Thursday for a previously scheduled one-week recess. The House also adjourned Thursday for its previously scheduled recess, though members are on call to return within 48 hours if an agreement is reached. Thune said Thursday if a deal is struck, senators will need to get back to the Capitol within 24 hours.

Some GOP senators publicly pushed to stay in session in the event of a DHS shutdown, but many others pleaded with their colleagues during a closed-door lunch earlier this week to let them go back home and campaign.

Others are scheduled to leave Thursday to go on international trips, including a bipartisan group heading to the Munich Security Conference. House Speaker Mike Johnson has barred members from traveling to Munich or going on other government-funded trips over the break.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump’s nominee for a high-ranking State Department post told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday he will not stop making posts and statements as he waits for congressional confirmation.

Members from both parties on the committee grilled Jeremy Carl, who the White House tapped to serve as assistant secretary of state for International Organizations, during a confirmation hearing, over a string of comments Democrats call antisemitic and racist that have surfaced in recent months.

“I greatly understand the importance of restraint and conduct,” said Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank with members dispersed throughout Washington. “I unfortunately have to balance that with my current job, which involves advocacy and I can’t, as I’ve explained, just totally put away my day job. I’m not being offered a job here yet.“

In the past, Carl has appeared to endorse the “great replacement theory,” slammed the Juneteenth holiday and called for the execution of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, according to CNN. He deleted nearly 5,000 social media posts since before his nomination, the outlet reported in September.

“We are essentially moving,” he told conservative media commentator Tucker Carlson in April 2024, “to what is effectively, a post-White America.”

Democrats also hit out at Carl, who grew up Jewish before converting to Christianity, for what they say are derisive comments he’s made about Jewish Americans, including statements that diminish the effects of the Holocaust.

“No person who thinks Jews should get over the Holocaust and spreads pernicious Jewish stereotypes can claim to have the character or judgment necessary to serve as a diplomat for this country,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, said in a statement this week.

Democrats on the foreign relations committee, including ranking member Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), a former synagogue president, panned Carl for his past statements.

A vote for Carl “tells Americans you’re willing to use your sacred vote, not just to ignore but to endorse the hateful statements,” Rosen implored her colleagues.

“It tells Jewish Americans they simply don’t matter,” she said.

Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he disapproves of the Justice Department surveilling lawmakers who come to agency headquarters to review the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for anybody to be tracking that,” Johnson told reporters. “So I will echo that to anybody involved with DOJ, and I’m sure it was an oversight. That’s my guess.”

This week, members of Congress have been invited to a DOJ office building to read materials related to the federal case against Epstein that have not been scrubbed for public consumption.

“Members should obviously have the right to peruse those at their own speed and with their own discretion,” Johnson said.

But revelations came to light Wednesday, when Attorney General Pam Bondi was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, that the department might be keeping tabs on which documents lawmakers are viewing on official computers. During Bondi’s appearance on Capitol Hill, a photo was taken of her research binder that revealed a print-out page of the “Search History” for Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

“It is an outrage that DOJ is tracking Members’ investigative steps undertaken to ensure that DOJ is complying with the Epstein File Transparency Act and using this information for the Attorney General’s embarrassing polemical purposes,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, in a statement.

Jayapal said in an interview with NPR that she had also raised her concerns with Johnson.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, at his weekly news conference Thursday, said he would follow up to ensure Johnson is pressing the matter with the DOJ directly and “make clear to him that his job is to defend this institution.”

Jeffries continued, “it does violate the principles of separate and co-equal branches of government. And of course, my Republican colleagues should be denouncing it, but they will not, because they simply are reckless rubber stamps for Donald Trump’s extreme behavior.”

Asked whether Democrats would seek reprisal for the DOJ tracking, Jeffries said “accountability can either happen right now” or “in the aftermath of the November midterm elections,” when the New Yorker is bullish that his party will retake control of the House.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment about the motivation behind monitoring lawmakers’ searches or plans to stop the practice.