House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.

Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and certainly won’t pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.

But Johnson said House Republicans simply could not swallow the Senate bill, which omits funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol and some other parts of Customs and Border Protection.

“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”

The move toward an eight-week stopgap creates a tactical gulf between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who called an end to weeks of abortive bipartisan talks Thursday and pushed through the funding bill in hopes of tacking on funding later for ICE and CBP in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.

President Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the GOP infighting on Capitol Hill, keeping his criticism trained on Democrats. He ordered DHS to pay TSA officers Thursday as long security lines snarls more U.S. airports.

Johnson played down the split with his Senate counterpart, saying the Democratic leader there bore more blame for the impasse.

“I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate. I have to protect the House. … Our colleagues on this side understand this is not a game. We are not playing their games.”

Thune said early Friday morning he did not speak directly to Johnson in the final hours leading up to the Senate’s voice vote, but he said they had texted. He acknowledged he did not know in advance how the House would handle the Senate bill.

“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” he said.

Johnson made his game plan clear with House Republicans on a private call just minutes before addressing reporters in the Capitol, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call. He warned that a failure to advance the short-term DHS stopgap would upend GOP plans for a reconciliation bill, the people said.

He suggested the Senate could quickly clear the stopgap measure once it passes the House. Most senators have left Washington for a recess running through April 13, but Johnson said the chamber could approve the House measure by unanimous consent at a planned pro forma session Monday.

But some House Republicans on the private call, including Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, aired doubts it could pass the Senate — or even the House. Some fellow GOP centrists argued that the House should just swallow the Senate bill and end the standoff.

The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.

The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”

Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”

A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.

Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.

The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.

President Donald Trump plans to send Congress a budget request April 3, detailing his policy and funding wish list for the fiscal year that begins in October, according to a spokesperson for the White House budget office.

It’s unclear whether the president will also submit a supplemental military funding request at the same time, to aid the military in the U.S. conflict in Iran. For more than a week, the White House has been reviewing a Pentagon request for about $200 billion in emergency cash to support new military action in the Middle East.

Trump already called in January for a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the upcoming fiscal year, a $500 billion increase from the Pentagon’s current funding levels.

The president’s budget is scheduled to arrive on Capitol Hill almost nine weeks after it was due Feb. 2. Though the fiscal blueprint is nonbinding, top appropriators in both parties have expressed frustration with the delay, since they rely on the framework to begin writing the dozen annual funding bills Congress must pass by Sept. 30.

A growing number of House Republicans are airing public concerns about President Donald Trump‘s possible deployment of U.S. ground troops in Iran as the Pentagon sends thousands of American paratroopers and other servicemembers to the Middle East.

Nearly every GOP lawmaker has voted to green-light Trump’s military campaign. But a growing number, including some veterans, are voicing new reservations as evidence mounts that Trump could escalate the war to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, secure Iran’s nuclear stockpile or accomplish other strategic goals.

“I’m really, really hopeful this doesn’t turn into a boots-on-the-ground situation,” Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Thursday. “My biggest concern this whole time is that this would turn into another long Middle Eastern war.”

“Though I don’t want to try and take away any of the president’s ability to carry out this operation, I know a lot of our supporters and a lot of members of Congress are very concerned” about that possibility, Crane added.

The comments from a MAGA-aligned former Navy SEAL who served five wartime deployments underscore the deepening wariness among Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Some are warning in public and private that the midterm backlash to any ground invasion of Iran would be swift and severe.

“We lose 60 to 70 seats,” said one House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly about the matter.

Senior House Democrats are making plans to force another vote on a resolution that would restrict U.S. military action in Iran. But they’ve delayed it until the House returns from recess in mid-April given absences in their ranks and the need to secure more GOP support after a similar measure narrowly failed earlier this month.

House Democratic leaders have been working to flip a handful of Democrats who opposed the last war powers resolution and now believe they only need one more Republican to flip to yes at this point, according to three people granted anonymity to speak freely about private conversations.

“No U.S. troops on the ground,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said in an interview, suggesting she could be the third Republican to break with Trump and help pass the Democratic-led war powers measure next month.

“If we’re in this phase where there are troops on the ground, then we’re in a different phase of the conflict, which requires Congress’s input,” Mace said.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), another retired Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and represents a competitive district, said in an interview he’s been “very clear” that he does not support uniformed American troops being put on the ground in Iran.

Van Orden said he believes Trump has “learned” from the mistakes of previous presidents who’ve gotten the country stuck in endless wars abroad.

House GOP leaders are mindful of the promises many of their frontline incumbents who won tight races made to their constituents: Republicans would not pursue endless military campaigns and regime change abroad.

Asked last week about the Pentagon sending several thousand U.S. Marines into the Middle East, Speaker Mike Johnson said, “I haven’t seen the details of it.”

Following more reports of troop deployments this week, Johnson said the U.S. is “wrapping up” the current military operation against Iran and he believed U.S. boots on the ground “is not the intention” that Trump is pursuing.

“It should not be necessary” for U.S. forces to invade Iran, he added in a Fox News interview Thursday. “I think we can get this resolved without it.”

But concerns are rising among the GOP rank-and-file, especially after a classified briefing Wednesday didn’t provide many answers to Armed Service Committee members about the administration’s plans for the divisions they are sending to the region around Iran.

Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.), one of Democrats’ biggest targets in November, also cautioned against a protracted war when asked this week about the U.S. troops heading to the Middle East.

“I think we certainly do not want to get embroiled in another Forever War,” Mackenzie said in an interview.

“So I hope this is maybe a precautionary measure or posturing to get a better deal out of the Iranians,” he added. “But we do need to figure out what the path is forward, and we as members of Congress are looking forward to getting an update from the administration.”

Rep. Gabe Evans of Colorado, another Republican who Democrats are targeting heavily, suggested the troop deployments were “just part of the negotiations … so this just goes back to the art of the deal.

“I don’t think anybody wants to see boots on the ground,” Evans added. “But if you don’t, if you, if you paint a hard line and say, ‘We’re absolutely not going to do this,’ you’ve taken that off the table as a negotiating point.”

Trump weighed in directly to House Republicans Wednesday on his decision to conduct military strikes against Iran without getting congressional approval first.

“I won’t use the word ‘war,’ because they say if you use the word ‘war,’ that’s maybe not a good thing to do,” the president said at the annual NRCC fundraising dinner. “They don’t like the word ‘war,’ because you’re supposed to get approval. So I’ll use the word ‘military operation,’ which is really what it is. It’s called a military decimation.”

Trump also acknowledged higher energy and oil prices from the war, but he maintained it was more important to address the “cancer” of Iran despite the risks. House Republicans are also grappling with the fallout of high gas prices and a possible $200 billion price tag of the war and other military funding that Congress will have to debate soon.

Republicans note that reaction to the war so far is largely along party lines, but there is limited patience for higher gas prices among American voters.