{"id":20572,"date":"2026-03-26T08:47:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T08:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/i-just-want-to-go-home-despair-settles-over-the-capitol-as-dhs-deal-hopes-evaporate\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T08:47:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T08:47:22","slug":"i-just-want-to-go-home-despair-settles-over-the-capitol-as-dhs-deal-hopes-evaporate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/i-just-want-to-go-home-despair-settles-over-the-capitol-as-dhs-deal-hopes-evaporate\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I just want to go home\u2019: Despair settles over the Capitol as DHS deal hopes evaporate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Finger-pointing, profanity, even \u201cpoppycock.\u201d<\/p>\n

An overwhelming sense of frustration and despair has overtaken Congress as lawmakers try to clinch a deal to end a nearly six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security as a previously scheduled holiday recess looms.<\/p>\n

The funding framework Republican senators sketched out with President Donald Trump Monday now seems to be on life support<\/a>, and the Senate has yet to circle a backup agreement that would end the impasse over immigration enforcement tactics responsible for the ongoing DHS shutdown that\u2019s spurring air travel disruptions as unpaid TSA screeners stop showing up for work.<\/p>\n

Trump has shown little interest in bringing the two sides together on a deal. At a dinner hosted by the House GOP campaign arm Wednesday, with many lawmakers in attendance, Trump blamed Democrats for, he said, backing out of DHS funding agreements with Republicans in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause they don’t want to settle,\u201d the president said. \u201cThey want chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underscoring the deadlock, the Senate voted for a sixth time Wednesday against advancing a package to fund all of DHS.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like everybody is going to stare at each other for a little while,\u201d Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> said Wednesday, before nodding at lawmakers\u2019 best hope for getting a deal \u2014 their overwhelming desire to leave town.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know how it is around here, it\u2019s not Thursday yet,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes you\u2019ve just got to let things run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bipartisan talks continued late Wednesday night after lawmakers aired rising frustrations earlier in the day that recent progress had seemingly reversed. Raw feelings replaced the optimism that sprouted up around talks between the White House and Senate Democrats that picked up before this past weekend and were further fueled by conversations between the White House and GOP lawmakers Monday.<\/p>\n

Democrats say Republicans suddenly gave up this week on negotiating new rules for immigration enforcement agents after DHS officers fatally shot two people in Minnesota in January.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Republicans to now act as though Democrats have changed our position, as though we\u2019ve moved the goalpost, is poppycock \u2014 bad faith,\u201d Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a> said in a floor speech Wednesday. \u201cAnd for Republicans to send a proposal that has no reforms is bad faith, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans, for their part, say Democrats are unwilling to take yes for an answer \u2014 even after they proposed leaving out ICE enforcement funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how they will ever satisfy their crazy online political base,\u201d Thune told reporters, \u201cbecause that\u2019s what this is about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawmakers in both chambers are scheduled to return home Friday for a two-week break around the Easter and Passover holidays. If Congress doesn\u2019t act by Saturday night, the DHS funding lapse will become the longest shutdown of any federal agency in U.S. history \u2014 exceeding the 43-day government-wide shutdown that ended in November.<\/p>\n

Thune is leaving the door open to keeping senators in Washington into, or even through, the recess. But Republicans privately expect to have attendance issues after several colleagues just skipped out on a rare weekend session to work through a partisan elections bill.<\/p>\n

One GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, summed up their feelings: \u201cI just want to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic Sen. Peter Welch<\/a> of Vermont described colleagues as \u201cmutually fatigued,\u201d adding that senators are \u201cgetting tired of each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thune floated the idea of calling senators back if he lets them leave and there is an agreement on DHS funding after the Senate has adjourned. But leaving town, some of his own members fear, would deep-six any chance of momentum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m struggling for an argument for us to leave unless we settle some of these things,\u201d Sen. Thom Tillis<\/a> (R-N.C.) told reporters Wednesday. \u201cWe\u2019ve got lots of plates spinning. And I am afraid if we leave until we get some certainty around them, a few of them are going to fall to the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans aren\u2019t the only ones watching the clock. A group of centrist House Democrats huddled Wednesday morning with Sen. Katie Britt<\/a> of Alabama, the Republican chair of the Homeland Security funding panel. According to a person granted anonymity to describe the private meeting, the House lawmakers were feeling \u201cantsy\u201d and worried their Senate Democratic counterparts were moving too slowly.<\/p>\n

California Rep. Adam Gray<\/a>, one of the Democrats who sat down with Britt, said House lawmakers wanted to \u201cstrike a sense of urgency\u201d among Senate negotiators and \u201cencourage them to get on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think we can just all sit around here. The American public is increasingly frustrated,\u201d Gray added.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just their own schedules that senators are keeping a close eye on. With the Easter holiday coming up and spring breakers traveling across the country, lawmakers are bracing for the situation at airports to further deteriorate.<\/p>\n

The head of TSA told members of the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday that more than 480 screeners have quit<\/a> since the shutdown began more than five weeks ago, calling it \u201ca dire situation\u201d and warning of a \u201cperfect storm of severe staffing shortages and an influx of millions of passengers\u201d ahead of World Cup games this summer.<\/p>\n

Senate Democrats sent Republicans a counteroffer Wednesday, but it was immediately dismissed as unserious by GOP leaders.<\/p>\n

Democrats are irked that the Republican framework does not include any of the immigration enforcement changes the two parties have been discussing since DHS agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January. Those shootings largely united Democratic lawmakers behind demands for new rules such as barring immigration agents from wearing masks or entering homes without judicial warrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn’t invent this out of thin air,\u201d Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy<\/a>, the top Democrat on the DHS funding panel, told reporters Wednesday. \u201cThey murdered two Americans in cold blood. They are behaving illegally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murphy said Democrats have made considerable concessions to Republicans during the weeks of negotiations, but some Republicans said Democrats had rejected deals and abandoned another that had been outlined at the negotiating table. Under that framework, only the DHS policy constraints agreed to before the Minneapolis killings would be enacted, but funding for ICE enforcement and removal efforts would not be included.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the proposal was pitched to Trump this week, Sen. John Kennedy<\/a> (R-La.) said in an interview, in hopes of breaking the impasse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole deal had been premised on Senator Schumer and our Democratic colleagues opening everything else up besides ICE, and then we deal with ICE,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cAnd they have backed off that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riley Rogerson and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finger-pointing, profanity, even \u201cpoppycock.\u201d An overwhelming sense of frustration and despair has overtaken Congress as lawmakers try to clinch a deal to end a nearly six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security as a previously scheduled holiday recess looms. The funding framework Republican senators sketched out with President Donald Trump Monday now seems to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}