Congress

Pressure builds on Congress as DHS shutdown threatens to drag into April

Published

3 months ago

March 23, 2026

The shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is at risk of shattering the record for the longest-ever funding lapse for any federal agency if President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats can’t strike a deal this week.

Lawmakers are scheduled to take a two-week recess for Passover and Easter starting Friday. While the Senate is considering staying in session if the shutdown is not resolved, House GOP leaders do not plan to cut their break short in hopes of reaching an accord, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private planning.

“It’s going to be very, very hard to explain if we leave town this next week without having funded” DHS, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters over the weekend.

Trump threw a curveball into the rekindled talks Sunday night when he declared on Truth Social he would not back any deal unless it includes the GOP’s partisan elections bill, the SAVE America Act. Senators, Trump said, should “lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!!”

“Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary,” he wrote.

The House and Senate are not scheduled to return to business until the week of April 13, when the DHS shutdown would hit Day 60 — significantly exceeding the 43-day record set last fall for the longest federal funding lapse in U.S. history.

The threat of a two-month shutdown — and evidence of lengthening TSA lines at U.S. airports as security officers refuse to work without pay — has spurred an uptick in what had been completely stalled negotiations.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers met twice in the Capitol late last week with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan. Negotiators continued to talk over the weekend, after the White House laid out an expanded offer Friday that included changes to DHS immigration enforcement tactics — the crux of the shutdown fight.

“We’ll see if they can land something,” Thune said in an interview Sunday before Trump delivered his ultimatum. “The clock’s ticking. If we’re going to get this done, we’ve got to get moving pretty quickly here.”

With the urgency to clinch a bipartisan agreement increasing, the White House has sought to engage some of the Democrats who helped negotiate a solution to the broader government funding lapse that ended in November. That includes New Hampshire Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, along with Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Those senators were among the bipartisan group of lawmakers who met in person with Homan last week, along with Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator.

“I can tell you that Democrats are really united, and we are talking to the White House and telling them what our demands are,” Murray told reporters Sunday afternoon. “I don’t know how you define progress. That is really up to the White House, whether they’re willing to move forward on this or not.”

Republican negotiators voiced frustration over the weekend that Democrats hadn’t responded to the updated offer the Trump administration delivered Friday night.

“I would have hoped we could continue to build on the momentum, positive momentum, that I felt like we had at the meeting Friday,” Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), chair of the DHS funding panel, said in an interview Sunday. “I’m clearly disappointed.”

Britt noted that the meetings with Homan last week marked the first in-person DHS negotiations between Democratic lawmakers, their Republican counterparts and a delegate from the White House since the talks began almost two months ago.

“The American people need us to get in the room,” Britt said. “And we have to be expeditious about this.”

Democrats on both sides of the Capitol have pressed Republicans multiple times to take up their bills that would fund all of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the secretary’s office.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Saturday on the Senate floor that negotiators are having “productive conversations,” but Congress should fund TSA in the meantime

“Let’s keep negotiating the outstanding issues with ICE while sending paychecks to TSA workers now,” he added.

But Republicans continue to object to votes on those proposals, saying the entire department needs to be funded. The House has twice passed DHS funding legislation, but Senate Democrats have repeatedly voted against advancing an all-DHS funding bill — most recently on Friday.

Increasingly, Republicans are highlighting the irony that the funding lapse barely affects the agencies Democrats are trying to reign in, since ICE and CBP received about $140 billion from the tax and spending law Republicans enacted along party lines last summer.

“They’re trying to please their base,” Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer, a Republican appropriator, said about Democrats in an interview. “But I would hope their base is smart enough to know that ICE and Border Patrol are already funded.”

Instead, the shutdown is causing the most disruption at agencies like TSA, where more than 300 airport security screeners have quit since funding lapsed more than five weeks ago. As the workforce goes without pay, TSA callouts also tipped over 10 percent multiple days last week, leading to long lines and travel disruptions at airports across the country.

Starting Monday, the Trump administration plans to detail ICE agents to U.S. airports to do jobs like guarding exits, allowing TSA agents to focus on screening passengers and baggage.

“We ought to fund TSA now,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who requested a vote last week on legislation to fund all of DHS except the immigration enforcement agencies. “But I don’t know why the Republicans insist on holding federal workers hostage, holding TSA workers hostage, so that they can have an unaccountable paramilitary force on our streets.”

Senate Republican leaders are still waiting to make the call on whether to delay or cancel the chamber’s two-week recess. They’re typically reluctant to send lawmakers home during a crisis that requires legislative action.

In contrast, under Speaker Mike Johnson, House Republican leaders have repeatedly resisted pressure to reconvene the House to consider critical legislation while lawmakers are back home during a congressional recess. They argue it’s up to Senate Democrats to cut a DHS deal with the White House.

“We’ll see,” Thune told reporters on Sunday about canceling recess. “We’ll kind of see how the rest of the week plays out.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

Hegseth to brief House Republicans on White House goals for party-line package

Published

43 minutes ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to give a classified briefing Wednesday to a group of House Republicans about the administration’s goals for military funding and another party-line reconciliation bill, according to three people granted anonymity to describe a private meeting.

The gathering will take place during the Republican Study Committee’s weekly lunch and be held in the House SCIF, underscoring the potentially sensitive nature of Hegseth’s planned presentation.

Lawmakers are expected to also press Hegseth on the agreement the Trump administration has reached with Iran to end the war.

Congress

Turek leads Hinson in Iowa Senate poll of likely general election voters

Published

6 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Iowa Democratic Senate nominee Josh Turek has a narrow lead over GOP rival Ashley Hinson in a new internal poll of likely general-election voters.

Turek leads Hinson 47 percent to 45 percent in the poll, conducted by Global Strategy Group from June 8-11 among 1,000 likely general election voters. The poll shows that Republicans have a 10-point edge in voter registration (42 percent to 32 percent) and an electorate that voted for Trump by 9 points (50 percent for Trump to 41 percent for Kamala Harris).

But the polling also shows President Donald Trump’s favorabilities underwater across the electorate, with 45 percent favorable and 52 percent unfavorable. Among registered independents, Trump is upside down 28 points.

Turek is “significantly outperforming the state’s underlying partisan dynamics,” Global Strategy Group’s Matt Canter & Ramzi Ebbini write in a memo first obtained by Blue Light News. “Republicans maintain substantial advantages in voter registration and party identification, yet Turek enters the general election ahead of Republican Ashley Hinson, with stronger personal favorability ratings, overperforming a generic Democrat, and with clear opportunities to expand his coalition as more voters become familiar with him.”

Some Republicans have acknowledged a concern about Iowa.

“There are some issues there that we got to deal with — the biggest one is trade — trade and tariffs,” said a Republican close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the obstacles.

In his early general election messaging, Turek has leaned into farmers’ frustrations.

“Josh Turek is winning this race because Iowans are sick and tired of multi-millionaire politicians like Ashley Hinson who sell out working families while they get rich,” Turek for Iowa campaign manager Brendan Koch said in a statement first shared with Blue Light News. “We will spend the next 134 days connecting with Iowans in every corner of the state and across the political spectrum to send a fighter for the working class to the U.S. Senate.”

Congress

Capitol agenda: House GOP races to make Recon 3.0 real

Published

7 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans have eight days to prove Reconciliation 3.0 might actually happen.

The House returns Tuesday with only eight legislative days before they break again for the July 4 holiday. If members want a realistic chance at fulfilling their self-imposed timeline for advancing the legislation before the end of July — when they pause work again for another five weeks — they need to move fast.

That means assembling, and then adopting, a budget resolution — the first step in unlocking the filibuster skirting power of the reconciliation process. It took Republicans months to advance such a blueprint during their two earlier reconciliation efforts this Congress.

House GOP leaders are tentatively planning another senior-level reconciliation meeting for Wednesday, according to three people involved in the talks granted anonymity to discuss private plans.

Still, the House is coming back with several other moving items to deal with this week, including promised briefings on the president’s Iran deal and a major housing affordability package GOP leadership wants to clear as soon as Wednesday.

Reconciliation talks also come as President Donald Trump is expected to join the Senate’s GOP lunch Wednesday, where he’ll likely continue pushing the chamber to pass his SAVE America Act or attach pieces of the GOP elections bill to the party-line legislation (an idea one of the bill’s biggest backers, Sen. Mike Lee, spiked Sunday).

Republicans involved with Reconciliation 3.0 discussions also warn they need to reach a final agreement on how to pay for the bill as well as what policy items will be included before GOP leaders can try to advance any budget resolution.

At this point, however, many fiscal hawks and at-risk incumbents are largely unhappy about how the discussions are coming along.

“It’s fake pay-fors for defense spending no one has fully agreed to and no meaningful reforms,” said one House Republican granted anonymity to discuss private talks.

Back on the other side of the Capitol, GOP senators have been in no rush to start working on a third party-line bill, especially as they are consumed with other political fires — like trying to confirm Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence to speed up a FISA reauthorization (more on that below).

Rep. Morgan Griffith said he was confident if the right policies are included in the House plan the Senate would then take it up — although he, too, acknowledged the challenges of a short timeline.

“If we do it right, yeah,” Griffith said. “There’s some interesting things out there that are being discussed that could make it a real possibility.”

What else we’re watching:

— OBAMA’S FEROCIOUS IRAN CRITIC SOFTER ON TRUMP DEAL: Tom Cotton, the No. 3 Senate Republican and chair of the chamber’s Intelligence panel, is not alone among GOP defense hawks in finding himself in an awkward position trying to defend Trump’s Iran deal after lambasting President Barack Obama’s a decade before. But the combination of his prior ferocity toward the Iranian regime and his current leadership responsibilities have put him into an especially tight spot.

— FIRST IN IC: DEMS WANT MORE OF JACK SMITH’S REPORT: Senate Judiciary Democrats are asking a federal court to unseal part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report about his investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after his first term. The request from the Senators comes as the Judiciary Committee is poised to call Smith to testify about his Biden-era cases before the end of this Congress. Republicans in the House and Senate have been investigating Smith’s work, alleging it amounted to a weaponization of the federal government against the then ex-president.

Jordain Carney and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.